PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 


PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

STUDIES  IN  ISAIAH  AND 
BROWNING 


Hectureg  for  1909 


BY 


ARTHUR   ROGERS 

AUTHOR  OF 

"MEN  AND  MOVEMENTS  IN  THE  ENGLISH  CHURCH" 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND    CO. 

91  AND  93  FIFTH   AVENUE,  NEW   YORK 

LONDON,   BOMBAY,   AND    CALCUTTA 

1909 


Copyright,  spop, 
BY  LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  Co. 


THB   UNIVERSITY   PRBS6,  CAMBRIDGE    U.  S.  A. 


To  C.  A.  R. 


2209256 


THE 

JOHN  BOHLEN  LECTURESHIP 

JOHN  BOHLEN,  who  died  in  this  city  on  the 
twenty-sixth  day  of  April,  1874,  bequeathed  to 
trustees  a  fund  of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
to  be  distributed  to  religious  and  charitable  objects 
in  accordance  with  the  well-known  wishes  of  the 
testator. 

By  a  deed  of  trust,  executed  June  2,  1875,  the 
trustees  under  the  will  of  Mr.  Bohlen  transferred 
and  paid  over  to  "The  Rector,  Church  Wardens, 
and  Vestrymen  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity, 
Philadelphia,"  in  trust,  a  sum  of  money  for  certain 
designated  purposes,  out  of  which  fund  the  sum  of 
ten  thousand  dollars  was  set  apart  for  the  endow- 
ment of  THE  JOHN  BOHLEN  LECTURESHIP,  upon 
the  following  terms  and  conditions :  — 

The  money  shall  be  invested  in  good  substantial  and 
safe  securities,  and  held  in  trust  for  a  fund  to  be  called 
The  John  Bohlen  Lectureship,  and  the  income  shall  be 
applied  annually  to  the  payment  of  a  qualified  person, 
whether  clergyman  or  layman,  for  the  delivery  and  pub- 
lication of  at  least  one  hundred  copies  of  two  or  more 
lecture  sermons.  These  Lectures  shall  be  delivered  at 
such  time  and  place,  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia,  as  the 
persons  nominated  to  appoint  the  lecturer  shall  from 


viii      THE  JOHN  BOHLEN  LECTURESHIP 

time  to  time  determine,  giving  at  least  six  months  notice 
to  the  person  appointed  to  deliver  the  same,  when  the 
same  may  conveniently  be  done,  and  in  no  case  select- 
ing the  same  person  as  lecturer  a  second  time  within  a 
period  of  five  years.  The  payment  shall  be  made  to 
said  lecturer,  after  the  lectures  have  been  printed  and 
received  by  the  trustees,  of  all  the  income  for  the  year 
derived  from  said  fund,  after  defraying  the  expense  of 
printing  the  lectures  and  the  other  incidental  expenses 
attending  the  same. 

The  subject  of  such  lectures  shall  be  such  as  is  within 
the  terms  set  forth  in  the  will  of  the  Rev.  John  Bampton, 
for  the  delivery  of  what  are  known  as  the  "Bampton 
Lectures,"  at  Oxford,  or  any  other  subject  distinctively 
connected  with  or  relating  to  the  Christian  Religion. 

The  lecturer  shall  be  appointed  annually  in  the  month 
of  May,  or  as  soon  thereafter  as  can  conveniently  be  done, 
by  the  persons  who,  for  the  time  being,  shall  hold  the 
offices  of  Bishop  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of 
the  Diocese  in  which  is  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity ; 
the  Rector  of  said  Church;  the  Professor  of  Biblical 
Learning,  the  Professor  of  Systematic  Divinity,  and  the 
Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History,  in  the  Divinity  School 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Philadelphia. 

In  case  either  of  said  offices  are  vacant  the  others 
may  nominate  the  lecturer. 

Under  this  trust  the  Reverend  ARTHUR  ROGERS, 
Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  West 
Chester,  Pennsylvania,  was  appointed  to  deliver 
the  lectures  for  the  year  1909. 


PREFACE 

AOOK  is  like  a  sentence  in  that,  to  be 
complete,  it  must  needs  have  both  a 
subject  and  an  object.  I  do  not  mean 
the  sort  of  object  which  has  to  do  with  the  public, 
whether  it  be  to  improve  its  morals  or  to  induce  it 
to  buy  the  volume.  But  the  author  must  have  in 
mind  the  kind  of  people  whom  he  would  like  to 
read  his  book,  and  the  effect  that  he  would  like  it 
to  produce.  The  subject  of  this  volume  is  suffi- 
ciently indicated  by  the  title.  It  is  a  comparison 
between  two  great  men,  each  of  them  a  leader  in 
his  generation,  and  one  of  them  at  any  rate  an  out- 
standing figure  in  the  history  of  the  world's  thought. 
A  word  as  to  its  object  may  not  be  amiss.  Isaiah 
suggests  sermons,  but  there  are  no  sermons  here. 
Browning  suggests  essays,  but  this  is  no  book  of 
essays.  I  have  meant  to  set  my  heroes  side  by  side, 
to  point  out  where  there  is  a  likeness,  and  then  to 
prove  the  likeness,  not  by  my  own  words,  but  by 
theirs.  Selection  and  proportion,  therefore,  have 


x  PREFACE 

played  a  large  part  in  my  work.  There  are  persons, 
good  citizens  and  doers  of  the  moral  law,  who  find 
Isaiah  dull  and  Browning  unintelligible.  If  this 
book,  through  some  inadvertence  or  the  gift  of  ill- 
judged  friends,  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  any 
such,  they  will  presently  cast  it  from  them  as  the 
abomination  of  desolation.  They  will  be  right.  It 
was  never  meant  for  them.  But  I  am  not  without 
hope  that  there  may  be  some  who  have  known  and 
loved  Isaiah,  while  they  have  not  known  much 
about  Browning,  and  some  others,  who  have  known 
and  loved  Browning,  while  they  have  thought  of 
Isaiah  as  inspired  but  without  much  human  in- 
terest, whom  my  book  may  lead  to  want  to  know 
the  other  better.  It  is  those  who  have  cared  much 
for  both  who  will  know  best  whether  I  have  done 

my  work  well  or  ill. 

A.  R. 

WEST  CHESTER,  PENNSYLVANIA 
January,  1909 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.   THE  COMMON  GROUND  OF  POETRY  AND 

RELIGION i 

II.  ISAIAH  AMONG  THE  PROPHETS      .     .  27 

III.  BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS      .     .  52 

IV.  ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING 95 

V.  THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA 117 

VI.  THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN    .     .149 

VII.  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE  .     .    176 

VIII.  THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  ...    206 

IX.  THE  BESETTING  GOD 239 


PROPHECY   AND    POETRY 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  COMMON  GROUND   OF  POETRY 
AND  RELIGION 

RELIGION  and  Poetry  are  two  most  potent 
and  far-reaching  words.  Without  religion, 
though  God  would  still  be  God,  He  would  be  ban- 
ished from  men's  thought  of  Him,  and  the  earth, 
in  other  than  a  physical  sense,  would  be,  as  at 
its  first  beginning,  without  form  and  void.  Without 
poetry,  there  would  be  a  closing  of  vistas,  a  darkening 
of  the  heavens,  a  general  shutting  up  within  the  limits 
of  the  material  and  the  commonplace.  The  wise 
man  of  old  declared  that  where  there  is  no  vision  the 
people  perish.  If  we  think  of  humanity  as  one  great 
body,  the  poets  are,  as  it  were,  the  eyes.  If  they  were 
lacking,  the  blackness  of  thick  darkness  would  settle 
down  over  a  large  part  of  life. 

Neither  Poetry  nor  Religion  lend  themselves  easily 

to  formal  definition.     There  are  times,  of  course, 

i 


2  PROPHECY  AND    POETRY 

when  definition  is  most  necessary,  but  there  are  other 
times  when  it  is  quite  as  likely  to  do  harm  as  good. 
It  is  apt  to  leave  out  what  should  have  been  included, 
and  to  include,  and  so  to  become  responsible  for, 
what  might  as  well  have  been  left  out.  After  all, 
definition  is  only  another  word  for  limitation,  and 
now  and  then  we  like  to  feel  that  there  are  no  walls  to 
shut  us  in,  no  fences  to  bar  our  progress  and  hinder 
us  from  wandering  freely  at  our  own  sweet  will.  We 
learned  in  school  the  algebraic  formula  for  the  square 
of  a  plus  b.  There  is  no  doubt  about  it.  It  is  a  fact 
undeniable  and  incontrovertible.  We  can  explain  it 
and  understand  it,  and  when  it  has  been  stated  the 
last  word  upon  the  subject  has  been  said.  But 
sometimes  it  is  good  for  us  to  have  to  do  with  what 
we  can  neither  altogether  explain  nor  altogether 
understand.  It  is  impossible  to  describe  the  manner 
in  which  men  choose  their  friends.  It  does  not  by 
any  means  follow  that  they  are  the  brightest  or  the 
best  amongst  our  circle  of  acquaintance.  Sometimes 
they  are,  sometimes  they  are  not;  it  seems  to  be  a 
matter  of  indifference.  It  is  a  most  shabby-genteel 
kind  of  friendship  which  depends  in  any  way  upon 
benefits  received.  These  may  follow  as  an  effect, 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  3 

but  they  are  quite  inadequate  as  an  exciting  cause. 
Again,  there  are  times  when  our  friends  do  things 
which  we  dislike,  or  even  disapprove.  But  somehow 
or  other  they  enter  into  our  lives,  and  give  to  us  in 
measure  which  no  outsider  could  possibly  understand. 
There  is  no  such  complete  finish  to  the  whole  matter 
as  in  the  case  of  the  algebraic  formula.  But  if  it 
comes  to  a  comparison  between  algebra  and  friend- 
ship, there  are  few  who  would  not  feel  that  friendship 
covers  a  more  interesting  and  attractive  part  of  life. 
All  this  is  true  when  we  come  to  speak  of  Poetry  or 
Religion.  It  is  not  hard  to  find  things  to  say  about 
them.  But  it  is  quite  impossible  to  say  the  last  word 
about  either  of  them,  to  do  them  up  in  some  neat 
parcel  which  the  casual  customer  may  take  away. 
They  are  too  large  for  any  such  easy  treatment.  They 
mean  so  much  that  one  shrinks  from  trying  even  to 
suggest  their  meaning,  lest  he  should  put  it  illy  and 
awry.  They  carry  us  into  deep  waters  where  there 
are  no  soundings.  We  are  in  danger  of  weakening 
our  citadel  with  superfluous  and  useless  battle- 
ments, which  give  so  many  added  vantage-points  to 
any  prowling  enemy.  However  much  may  be  said 
about  either  of  them,  and  however  truly  it  may 


4  PROPHECY  AND    POETRY 

be   spoken,   we  know  that  the  half  has  not  been 
told. 

Religion  is  man's  going  out  to  God.  It  is  his  com- 
ing to  himself  among  the  husks  of  matter,  and  claim- 
ing for  his  own  the  Father  from  whose  home  he  came. 
It  calls  upon  him  to  lift  his  eyes  to  heaven.  As  we 
have  it  in  the  form  of  Christianity,  it  brings  heaven 
down  to  earth.  It  is  the  expression  and  acknowledg- 
ment of  our  relationship  to  God.  We  are  His  people, 
and  the  sheep  of  His  pasture.  Poetry,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  man's  highest  thought  about  himself  —  the 
world  he  lives  in,  the  problems  which  he  has  to  face. 
It  is  inevitable  that  such  thought  should  not,  sooner 
or  later,  lead  to  God ;  but  in  poetry  God  is  not,  as  in 
religion,  the  professed  goal.  As  Principal  Shairp  puts 
it  —  "To  appeal  to  the  higher  side  of  human  nature, 
and  to  strengthen  it ;  to  come  to  its  rescue  when  it  is 
overborne  by  worldliness  and  material  interests;  to 
support  it  by  great  truths,  set  forth  in  their  most 
attractive  form  —  this  is  the  only  worthy  aim,  the 
adequate  end,  of  all  poetic  endeavor."  Religion 
deals  with  the  will,  Poetry  quickens  the  emotions. 
Religion  sets  forth  duties.  It  is  Poetry's  business  to 
fill  those  duties  with  enthusiasm.  The  prophet 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  5 

speaks  to  man  for  God.  The  poet,  at  his  highest, 
speaks  to  God  for  men.  He  is  not  different  from  his 
brethren,  but  he  is  man  in  the  superlative  degree. 
Poetry  is  like  one  of  Chopin's  Nocturnes,  seeking, 
aspiring,  hoping,  yet  not  without  a  suggestion  that 
that  which  is  sought  has  not  yet  been  found.  Can 
man  by  searching  find  out  God?  The  old  question 
which  comes  to  us  from  the  very  dawn  of  history  has 
gained  no  new  answer  from  the  centuries  that  have 
passed  over  it.  Then  Religion  comes  to  the  rescue. 
It  may  be  compared  to  that  glorious  Sanctus  of 
Gounod,  where  nothing  is  sought  because  there  is 
no  need  of  seeking,  but  which  lifts  us  from  adoration 
to  the  rest  that  remaineth  for  the  people  of  God,  and 
to  that  peace  of  God  which  cannot  be  explained, 
because  it  passeth  understanding,  but  which  can  be 
realized,  as  many  a  struggling  soul  has  learned 
through  blessed  experience.  If  Poetry  is  the  expres- 
sion of  man's  highest  thought,  Religion  is  at  once  the 
acknowledgment  and  the  satisfaction  of  his  deepest 
need. 

In  any  study  of  Religion,  there  are  two  words 
which  will  be  constantly  recurring.  They  are  faith 
and  love.  When  the  ancient  prophet  Habakkuk 


6  PROPHECY   AND   POETRY 

declared  that  the  just  should  live  by  his  faith,  he 
was  stating  no  new  doctrine.  It  was  the  very  prin- 
ciple of  life.  Faith  of  some  sort  is  of  the  very  air  we 
breathe.  St.  Paul  took  the  saying,  and  put  it  at  the 
foundation  of  his  teaching.  We  are  told  that  without 
faith  it  is  impossible  to  please  God.  Its  triumphs 
are  recounted  in  that  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  which  stands  as  a  sort  of  roll  of  honor  of 
the  ancient  world.  To  be  able  to  see  what  is  in- 
visible, to  make  one's  own  what  is  as  yet  unseen, 
is  the  surest  guarantee  of  endurance.  And  we  see 
faith's  power,  when  we  find  Christ  saying  to  the 
woman  who  came  to  Him  for  help  —  "  Thy  faith 
hath  saved  thee;  go  in  peace." 

But  while  faith  is  so  powerful,  it  must  yield  the 
chief  place  to  love.  There  might  be  such  a  thing  as 
loveless  faith.  We  are  told  that  the  devils  also 
believe,  and  tremble.  But  while  there  may  be 
unfaithfulness,  it  would  be  hard  to  imagine  such  a 
thing  as  faithless  love,  a  love  which  did  not  trust  its 
object.  The  same  St.  Paul  who  preached  of  faith 
with  such  enthusiasm  compares  it  directly  with  love 
to  its  exceeding  disadvantage.  Though  I  have  all 
faith,  so  that  I  could  remove  mountains,  and  have 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  7 

not  love,  I  am  nothing.  Love  includes  faith. 
It  is  a  mere  incident  that  it  believes  all  things. 
The  two  great  commandments  of  the  law  which 
Christ  reiterated  for  His  disciples  were  that  they 
should  love  the  Lord  their  God  with  heart  and  soul 
and  mind  and  strength,  and  that  they  should  love 
their  neighbor  as  themselves.  St.  John  declares  that 
those  who  have  learned  love's  meaning  have  passed 
from  death  to  life;  and  when  he  seeks  to  describe 
God  in  words  he  can  find  no  better  definition  than 
to  say  that  God  is  love. 

These  words,  which  figure  so  prominently  in 
anything  that  can  be  called  religion,  are  not  without 
their  counterparts  in  poetry.  What  we  have  been 
thinking  of  as  faith  now  becomes  imagination.  Not, 
indeed,  that  faith  and  imagination  are  the  same, 
outside  the  garish  realms  of  those  strange  sects 
which  measure  the  depths  of  human  credulity  and 
folly.  But  they  are  alike  in  this, —  that  each  has  the 
power  of  grasping  the  unseen,  of  lengthening  the 
cords  of  the  mind,  of  passing  from  the  material  to 
the  spiritual.  And  that  love,  which  in  religion 
shows  itself  in  active  ways,  appears  in  poetry  in 
that  human  interest  which  makes  us  at  home  in 


8  PROPHECY   AND   POETRY 

every  period  of  history  and  under  every  heaven, 
that  touch  of  nature  which  makes  the  whole  world  kin. 
To  Poetry  and  Religion,  thought  of  in  this  way, 
there  belongs  a  very  large  common  ground.  Each 
has  its  own  sphere,  but  now  and  again  the  time  comes 
when  they  cannot  be  kept  apart.  It  is  impossible 
to  live  in  the  world,  still  less  to  look  out  upon  it  with 
any  interest  in  what  Tennyson  calls  "the  riddle  of 
the  painful  earth,"  and  not  to  be  impressed  by  the 
problem  of  human  suffering  which  meets  us  at 
every  turn.  There  is  no  escaping  from  it.  Now 
and  then,  like  the  priest  and  the  Levite,  we  can  put 
it  off  for  a  little  by  crossing  the  road  and  looking 
the  other  way.  But  the  time  will  come  when  we 
must  carry  it  with  us  whatever  road  we  take;  and 
when,  if  we  close  our  eyes  to  it,  it  will  find  other  means 
of  making  its  presence  felt.  There  are  countless 
ways  by  which  we  may  be  afflicted  and  distressed,  in 
mind,  body,  and  estate.  "Why  art  thou  so  heavy, 
O  my  soul,  and  why  art  thou  so  disquieted  within 
me?"  It  is  a  common  enough  question.  Someone 
has  said  that  if  pessimism  be  true,  it  differs  from 
other  truths  by  its  uselessness.  But  in  a  spirit  quite 
different  from  that  of  the  pessimist,  we  may  almost 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  9 

say  that  this  sad  question  belongs  to  universal 
humanity  itself.  There  are  the  many  ills  which  flesh 
is  heir  to.  The  changes  and  chances  of  this  mortal 
life  press  heavily  upon  men.  It  grieves  us  that  here 
we  have  no  continuing  city.  We  cannot  sing  the 
Lord's  song  in  a  strange  land.  We  are  appalled  at 
the  absurdities  of  human  judgment.  Milton  received 
five  pounds  for  "Paradise  Lost,"  while  some  spoiler 
of  paper,  whose  wares  are  sold  with  thread  and  rail- 
way tickets,  earns  preposterous  sums  by  the  pen, 
more  bloodthirsty  than  any  sword,  with  which  he 
murders  literature.  Whether  suffering  be  physical 
or  mental,  whether  it  come  from  misunderstanding 
or  lack  of  appreciation  or  some  quite  different  cause, 
of  course  the  Psalmist's  answer  to  his  question  is  the 
only  one.  "O  put  thy  trust  in  God."  But  Poetry 
adds  corroborative  witness.  By  her  contempt  for 
worldliness  and  crass  materialism,  by  her  eager  state- 
ment of  the  problem,  by  her  gentle  sympathy,  as  in 
those  words  of  Virgil, 

"Tears  there  are  for  human  things, 
And  hearts  are  touched  by  mortal  sufferings," 

she  stands,  time  and  again,  as  a  minister  of  comfort. 
It  is  her  own  work,  while  it  is  Religion's  too. 


io  PROPHECY  AND   POETRY 

Another  region  in  which  Poetry  becomes  the  hand- 
maid of  Religion  is  where  it  broadens  men's  horizon, 
and  bids  them  "look  abroad,  and  see  to  what  fair 
countries  they  are  bound."  If  he  is  limited  simply  to 
his  own  experience,  the  most  traveled  man  is  des- 
perately provincial,  after  all.  The  man  who  cannot 
picture  to  himself  what  he  has  not  directly  before 
his  eyes  is  bound  to  be,  not  only  a  heretic,  but  a 
bore.  He  is  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils, 
or  for  whatever  may  chance  to  come  his  way.  He  is 
a  roaring  lion  in  the  house,  and  a  biting  serpent  in  the 
path.  He  canonizes  prejudice,  and  deifies  intellectual 
sluggishness.  Against  this  half-life,  a  dead  mind  in 
an  ungoverned  body,  Poetry  lifts  a  warning  voice. 
It  calls  upon  men  to  think,  and  to  think  of  something 
besides  their  own  rights,  and  their  neighbors'  errors. 
If  Euodias  and  Syntyche  cannot  agree  about  their 
own  affairs,  Poetry  gives  them  a  common  meeting- 
place  outside  themselves.  It  goes  far  towards  taking 
away  from  men  their  right  to  complain  of  loneliness 
and  isolation.  There  is  nothing  that  can  quite  take 
the  place  of  human  companionship.  We  need 
our  friends.  We  need  the  encouragement  and  appre- 
ciation of  our  kind.  It  is  good  to  feel  the  pressure 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  n 

of  a  friendly  shoulder  as  we  march  through  life. 
But,  given  half  a  chance,  it  is  a  man's  own  fault  if 
he  does  not  see  beyond  the  end  of  the  village  street. 
The  things  that  are  not  seen,  immediately,  are  the 
eternal  things;  and  Poetry,  as  it  quickens  and 
broadens  the  mind,  gives  us  power  to  grasp  these 
things.  It  is  not  what  we  are  in  the  habit  of  calling 
Revelation.  As  Ewald  defines  it,  Revelation,  in  its 
narrower  sense,  is  a  spiritual  incident  in  human 
history  which  is  now  closed.  It  is  not  Religion. 
That  requires,  not  only  that  a  man  should  see  the 
heavenly  vision,  but  that  he  should  not  be  disobedient 
to  it.  But,  without  Poetry,  Religion  would  lose  one  of 
its  most  efficient  aids. 

Not  only  does  Poetry  broaden  the  horizon.  It  has 
an  upward,  as  well  as  an  outward  look.  It  comes  to 
men  with  a  message  of  good  cheer.  It  bids  them  stir 
up  the  gift  that  is  in  them,  and  be  not  afraid  to  take 
their  places  in  the  world.  To  inspire  and  encourage 
is  its  business.  The  poet  is  fellow-laborer  with  the 
prophet.  The  prophet  speaks  out  what  God  has 
given  him  to  say.  He  cannot  be  silent  if  he  would, 
just  as  the  true  poet  "does  but  sing  because  he  must." 
He  is  a  man  of  the  spirit,  taken  possession  of  by  a 


12  PROPHECY  AND   POETRY 

power  higher  than  himself.  He  is  a  watchman,  set 
to  look  out  over  the  world,  and  to  see  where  help  is 
needed.  He  is  a  seer,  with  eyes  sharp  beyond  thos^ 
of  other  men.  And  the  poet  is  these  things  too. 
When  Poetry  helps  men  to  bear  their  burdens,  and 
points  them  to  a  higher  life,  it  is  doing  the  very  work 
of  God. 

In  this  connection  we  may  take  one  step  farther. 
Poetry  enlarges  life,  and  quickens  it,  and  lifts  it  to  a 
higher  plane.  But  it  does  even  more  than  this.  It 
looks  beyond  life,  and  tries  to  cast  light  upon  the 
problem  which  vexed  Job  of  old  —  "If  a  man  die, 
shall  he  live  again?"  It  would  pierce  the  darkness 
which,  until  Christ's  resurrection,  was  all  but  im- 
penetrable. It  is  very  different,  of  course,  from 
dogmatic  theology.  The  one  seeks  after  truth.  The 
other  has  truth,  or  thinks  it  has  it,  and  aims  to  set  it 
forth  in  orderly  form.  Where  things  are  too  definite, 
Poetry  has  no  place,  for  like  the  Spirit  of  God  we 
cannot  tell  whence  it  comes  nor  whither  it  goes. 
Any  attempt  to  make  Poetry  the  vehicle  of  dogmatism 
must  always  fail,  as  many  popular  hymns  cry  aloud 
to  heaven.  Those  are  regions  where  Poetry  comes  as 
an  intruder,  and  where  it  is  very  likely,  if  it  insists  on 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  13 

forcing  an  entrance,  to  play  the  fool.  But  where  it 
inquires,  and  seeks,  and  hopes,  though  it  concerns 
itself  with  the  very  deepest  problems,  it  is  never  out 
of  place. 

St.  Vincent  of  Lerins,  searching  for  a  standard  by 
which  Catholic  faith  might  be  determined,  declared 
that  that  should  be  so  regarded  which  had  been 
believed  always,  everywhere,  and  by  all.  It  was  not 
a  standard  favorable  to  the  formation  of  elaborate 
Articles  of  Faith.  But  in  the  way  in  which  we  have 
been  thinking  of  Poetry,  we  need  not  fear  to  submit 
it  even  to  so  severe  a  test.  For  the  Poetry  of  every 
period  and  every  nation  has  taken  on,  somewhere  or 
other,  this  religious  guise.  We  are  told  that  the 
inscription  on  the  cross  of  Christ  was  written  in 
Hebrew,  and  Greek,  and  Latin,  so  that  all  who  spoke 
those  languages  might  be  able  to  read  it  in  their 
common  speech.  And  surely,  in  each  one  of  them, 
there  was  that  which  was  making  ready  for  Chris- 
tianity, long  before  our  Lord  Himself  appeared  upon 
the  earth.  At  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners 
God  spake,  not  only  by  the  prophets,  but  through 
the  poets.  They  were  religious,  even  though  they 
could  not  be  Christian.  Their  views  of  life  have 


14  PROPHECY  AND   POETRY 

played  an  important  part  in  shaping  the  thought  of 
later  times. 

Any  mention  of  Greek  poetry  which  should  leave 
out  Homer  would  be  absurd.  It  is  true,  the  religious 
element  in  Homer  is  rare,  but  if  we  give  to  the  word 
religion  its  full  sweep  it  is  by  no  means  lacking.  It  is 
the  Christian  teaching  that  he  who  loves  God  will 
love  his  brother  also.  Conversely,  he  who  can  forget 
himself  for  his  friend's  sake,  whatever  may  be  his 
failings,  is  on  the  highroad  that  leads  to  the  kingdom 
of  God.  Achilles  was  very  far  from  being  a  pattern 
of  the  Christian  virtues.  But  in  his  devotion  to  his 
friend  Patroclus  the  man  who  could  be  so  fierce  and 
cruel  becomes  as  a  little  child.  Among  the  opposing 
hosts  of  Troy  there  is  a  like  instance  of  that  devotion 
which  lifts  men  heavenward,  together  with  an  eleva- 
tion of  duty  above  all  else  which  fits  in  well  with  the 
heroic  stature  of  the  poem.  Hector  returns  to  the 
city,  and  there  he  finds  his  wife  and  little  son.  He 
is  reminded  of  all  that  they  are  to  him,  of  all  that  his 
life  and  safety  must  mean  to  them.  He  recognizes 
the  force  of  Andromache's  counsels  of  prudence, 
the  claim  upon  him  of  her  affection  and  her  help- 
lessness. He  grieves  at  what  may  happen.  He  is 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  15 

not  blind  to  the  cruel  chance  of  war.  But  he  must 
go.  This  devotion  of  friend  to  friend,  of  husband 
to  wife,  of  patriot  to  fatherland,  can  hardly  be 
called  religion,  but  it  is  certainly  religious  in  a 
very  real  sense,  if  we  are  to  accept  St.  John's 
saying  that  every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of  God, 
and  knoweth  God.  We  shall  search  in  vain  in 
Homer  for  a  discussion  of  those  problems  of  life 
which  took  such  deep  hold  upon  the  thought  of  later 
Greece.  But  we  must  remember  that  Homer  be- 
longs to  the  very  dawn  of  history,  to  the  beginnings 
of  civilization.  He  is,  as  it  were,  a  child  setting 
forth  the  childhood  of  the  race,  and  in  such  matters 
it  is  as  a  child  that  he  speaks  and  thinks  and  under- 
stands. It  would  be  unnatural  if  it  were  otherwise. 
Homer  as  a  philosopher  or  a  theologian  would  be  an 
enormity.  To  say  that  Homer's  religion  is  implicit 
rather  than  explicit,  that  he  does  not  concern  him- 
self with  religious  problems,  is  simply  to  acquit  him 
of  forced  precociousness.  He  reflects  the  spirit  of 
the  time  in  which  he  lived.  The  time  for  deeper 
thought  had  not  yet  come. 

When  we  pass  on  from  Homer  to  what  may  be 
called  the  Golden  Age  of  the  Greek  drama,  we  find 


16  PROPHECY   AND   POETRY 

ourselves  in  quite  another  atmosphere.  There  is 
still  fighting.  ^Eschylus  was  at  Marathon,  and 
Sophocles  was  a  general  in  the  Athenian  war  with 
Samos.  But  life  has  become  less  simple  than  in 
earlier  days.  It  is  not  all  action  and  the  noise  of  war. 
Men  have  come  to  feel  that  it  means  something, 
and  they  are  wondering  and  wondering  what  it  is. 
"A  profound  sense  of  the  Divine  government  of  the 
world,  of  a  righteous  power  punishing  pride  and  vice, 
pursuing  the  children  of  the  guilty  to  the  tenth 
generation,  but  showing  mercy  to  the  contrite  —  in 
short,  a  mysterious  and  almost  Jewish  ideal  of 
offended  holiness  —  pervades  the  whole  work  of  the 
tragedians."  These  are  the  words  of  John  Adding- 
ton  Symonds,  than  whom  no  one  has  done  more  to 
make  the  Greek  poets  known  to  English  readers. 
And  so  we  find  the  idea  of  Nemesis,  the  sense  of 
retribution,  the  certainty  that  what  a  man  sows 
that  shall  he  also  reap,  appearing  everywhere.  With 
^Eschylus  it  is  a  mysterious  and  awful  law,  imposed 
from  without,  and  in  itself  of  more  importance  than 
the  men  controlled  by  it.  With  Sophocles  the  human 
side  is  made  more  prominent.  ^Eschylus  is  the 
judge,  intent  upon  the  triumph  of  right  principle; 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  17 

but  Sophocles  is  the  pastor,  who  cares  for  men. 
He  is  concerned  not  so  much  with  the  law  as  with 
the  lawbreaker,  not  so  much  with  the  sin  itself  as 
with  the  sinner.  With  each,  the  conduct  of  human 
affairs  is  referred  to  a  higher  power.  But  ^Eschylus 
lays  the  emphasis  upon  the  gods  who  direct,  while 
Sophocles  rather  lays  it  upon  the  men  who  perform 
or  who  fall  short.  If  ^Eschylus  is  the  theologian, 
Sophocles  is  the  interpreter  of  human  passions,  the 
apologist  for  human  weakness.  The  wrath  of  God 
is  no  less  real  to  him  than  to  his  predecessor,  but  it 
is  less  inflexible.  We  are  made  to  feel  the  mysteri- 
ousness  of  existence. 

"Many  the  forms  of  life 
Wondrous  and  strange  to  see; 
But  nought  than  man  appears 
More  wondrous  and  more  strange." 

Where  there  has  been  sin  there  must  be  suffering, 
often  vicarious  suffering.  But  sufferings  may  serve 
as  lessons.  The  spirit  of  man  may  rise  superior  to 
the  misfortunes  which  are  likely  to  overtake  man. 
No  external  curse,  even  though  it  should  come  down 
from  heaven,  can  take  away  real  purity  of  heart  and 
genuine  nobleness  of  soul.  Sophocles  is  said  to  have 


:8  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

written  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  thirteen  plays, 
of  which  only  seven  remain  to  us.  It  seems  a  pity 
that  the  others  could  not  have  been  ransomed  from 
oblivion  in  exchange  for  a  few  hundred  thousand 
works  which  still  survive.  But  in  the  seven  plays 
which  are  left,  Sophocles  shows  marvellous  insight 
into  human  life.  He  paints  it  sad  —  he  is  always  the 
tragedian.  But  we  are  taught  that  the  noble  things  in 
it  are  the  things  by  which  it  is  to  be  esteemed. 

Turning  from  Greece  to  Rome,  we  find  that  law, 
rather  than  religion  or  speculative  thought,  was  the 
genius  of  the  Roman  people.  When  Lucretius 
devoted  himself  to  the  composition  of  a  poem  which 
was  ostensibly  religious,  its  atmosphere  was  legal 
rather  than  theological.  But  Virgil,  at  any  rate,  is 
by  no  means  without  claim  to  be  regarded  as  a 
religious  poet.  The  Christian  Fathers  held  him  in 
special  honor.  St.  Augustine  called  him  the  finest 
and  noblest  of  poets.  St.  Jerome,  who  looked 
severely  on  all  heathen  writers,  thought  it  unseemly 
that  priests  should  read  him,  but  allowed  that  he  was 
a  necessity  for  boys.  His  verses  are  found  in  the 
burial-places  of  the  Catacombs,  associated  with  the 
cross  and  other  Christian  symbols.  There  is  an  old 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  19 

legend  that  St.  Paul,  on  his  way  to  Rome,  turned 
aside  to  visit  Virgil's  tomb  near  Naples.  As  we  have 
it  in  the  sonorous  mediaeval  Latin  — • 

"Ad  Maronis  mausoleum 
Ductus,  fudit  super  eum 
Piae  rorem  lacrymae; 
Quern  te,  inquit,  reddidissem, 
Si  te  vivum  invenissem, 
Poetarum  maxime ! " 

It  may  be  roughly  translated  thus  — 

"To  the  tomb  of  Virgil  coming, 
All  his  excellences  summing, 

Wept  the  apostle,  holy  Paul. 
O,  if  I  could  but  have  known  thee, 
What  the  things  I  would  have  shown  thee, 
Greatest  poet  of  them  all !  " 

Virgil's  religion  is  implied  rather  than  expressed,  to 
be  found  more  in  the  whole  spirit  of  his  writing  than 
in  any  form  of  words.  In  an  age  of  unbelief  and 
luxury  and  license  he  still  reverences  the  ancient  gods 
and  sings  the  praises  of  simplicity.  It  is  sometimes 
said  that  the  vulgar  splendor  and  garish  magnifi- 
cence of  which  our  own  age  is  not  without  examples 
had  its  prototype  in  the  Rome  of  Virgil's  day.  He 


20  PROPHECY   AND   POETRY 

was  no  rude  democrat,  assailing  rich  men  because 
they  happened  to  be  rich,  and  pouring  scorn  on 
everything  which  did  not  meet  his  taste.  But  there 
is  a  healthiness  about  him  which  compares  most 
favorably  with  the  ideals  of  the  time  in  which  he 
lived.  He  is  the  poet  of  the  country.  In  the  JEneid, 
we  have  the  figure  of  a  man  of  destiny.  ^Eneas  has 
often  been  compared,  to  his  disadvantage,  with  the 
Homeric  heroes.  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  He  is 
less  truculent  than  Achilles,  and  if  truculency  be 
made  the  standard  he  must  take  the  second  place. 
But  he  is  a  warrior  only  by  accident,  or  at  least  as  an 
incident  in  his  career.  He  fights,  and  he  fights 
admirably,  but  he  fights  not  for  the  pleasure  of  it, 
but  because  it  is  necessary  to  gain  his  end.  He  is  the 
bearer  of  the  Trojan  gods  to  Italy.  He  is  the  "pious 
^Eneas"  always.  In  our  day,  the  word  pious  has 
come  to  have  a  narrower  significance,  a  little  technical, 
and  sometimes  with  a  suggestion  not  quite  agreeable. 
But  as  Virgil  uses  it,  it  means  the  man  who  does  his 
duty.  It  includes  all  human  affections;  love  for  the 
old  father  whom  he  carried  on  his  shoulders;  for 
the  boy  whom  he  sought  to  teach  the  meaning  of 
virtue  and  genuine  toil,  leaving  him  to  learn  from 


THE  COMMON   GROUND  21 

others  the  meaning  of  success;  patriotism,  and 
fidelity  to  the  dead.  He  has  to  found  a  kingdom  for 
his  son,  to  establish  a  glorious  future  for  his  race. 
His  treatment  of  Dido  stands  out,  of  course,  as  a 
blot  upon  his  character.  But  when  we  think  of  him 
as  one  who  was  not  his  own,  but  who  had  been  set 
apart  by  heaven  for  its  especial  work,  we  have  an 
explanation  of  his  conduct,  even  though  it  be  no 
excuse.  In  other  than  the  Pauline  sense,  but  still  in 
a  sense  that  cannot  be  ignored  nor  brushed  away,  he 
is  the  servant  of  God. 

We  have  found  religion,  and  such  religion  as  could 
reach  its  fulfilment  in  Christianity,  among  those  of 
whom  we  are  wont  to  think  as  heathen.  When  now 
we  come  to  Hebrew  poetry,  it  is  all  religious.  Indeed, 
we  are  so  apt  to  think  of  it  upon  its  moral  and  didactic 
side  that  we  sometimes  forget  that  it  is  poetry.  In 
the  Book  of  Job  we  have  the  problem  of  suffering 
and  its  relation  to  God  discussed  from  every  point 
of  view.  If  we  seek  for  an  example  of  the  strength 
of  friendship,  we  have  it  in  David's  lament  for 
Jonathan.  "I  am  distressed  for  thee,  my  brother 
Jonathan;  very  pleasant  hast  thou  been  unto  me; 
thy  love  to  me  was  wonderful,  passing  the  love  of 


22  PROPHECY  AND   POETRY 

women."  The  same  David  shows  the  intensity  of  a 
father's  love,  even  though  it  be  but  ill-deserved.  It 
is  history,  but  it  is  poetry  too.  The  king  was  much 
moved,  and  went  up  to  the  chamber  over  the  gate, 
and  wept ;  and  as  he  went,  thus  he  said,  "  O  my  son 
Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  Absalom !  Would  God  I 
had  died  for  thee,  O  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son ! " 
It  is  the  exceeding  bitter  cry  that  has  gone  up  to 
heaven,  from  one  generation  to  another,  from  those 
who  have  been  wounded  in  their  tenderest  part  in 
that  they  have  been  called  upon  to  bear  the  in- 
gratitude, and  to  mourn  the  disgrace,  of  the  children 
of  many  hopes  and  prayers.  As  for  the  Psalms,  they 
have  been  the  treasure-house  of  devotion  in  every 
age.  From  the  prophets  we  have  the  voice  of  God  to 
man,  but  here  we  have  man  calling  upon  God.  They 
give  us  the  spiritual  history  of  the  times  in  which  they 
were  composed.  They  put  into  words  for  us  those 
most  secret  feelings,  which,  speaking  for  ourselves,  we 
should  neither  be  able  nor  willing  to  express.  They 
touch  the  very  depths  of  human  suffering.  Never 
had  the  miscarriage  of  friendship  a  more  tender 
elegy  than  from  him  who  was  betrayed  by  one  with 
whom  he  had  taken  sweet  counsel,  and  walked  in 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  23 

trust  and  confidence  in  the  house  of  God.  They 
show  us  the  patriot  in  exile,  the  man  of  high  ideals 
and  tender  conscience  who  has  lost  his  self-respect. 
But  they  go  also  to  the  other  extreme,  and  give  us 
examples  of  faith  and  joy  and  confidence  for  which  in 
any  such  degree  we  should  look  elsewhere  in  vain. 
To  exhaust  the  religious  element  in  Hebrew  poetry 
would  be  to  quote  the  entire  Psalter,  and  then  to  add 
whatever  poetry  still  remained.  Of  a  very  different 
spirit  from  that  which  is  commonly  brought  before 
us  in  the  Psalms,  though  even  there  there  are  most 
notable  examples  of  it,  is  Deborah's  song  of  victory. 
It  would  be  impossible  in  the  New  Testament,  but 
it  is  none  the  less  magnificent.  It  is  totally  lacking 
in  the  Christian  virtues,  but  it  is  tremendous  in  its 
fervid  intensity  —  religious,  because  in  God's  cause, 
and  in  no  personal  and  selfish  matter.  "  They  fought 
from  heaven;  the  stars  in  their  courses  fought 
against  Sisera.  She  put  her  hand  to  the  nail,  and  her 
right  hand  to  the  workman's  hammer ;  and  with  the 
hammer  she  smote  Sisera,  she  smote  off  his  head, 
when  she  had  pierced  and  stricken  through  his 
temples.  At  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell,  he  lay  down ; 
at  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell ;  where  he  bowed,  there 


24  PROPHECY  AND   POETRY 

he  fell  down  dead."  At  home  they  waited  for  him. 
They  gloated  over  triumphs  that  should  never  come 
to  pass.  "The  mother  of  Sisera  looked  out  at  a 
window,  and  cried  through  the  lattice,  '  Why  is  his 
chariot  so  long  in  coming  ?  Why  tarry  the  wheels  of 
his  chariot  ? '  '  Her  court  ladies  give  an  answer  that 
is  very  different  from  the  real  one.  And  then,  as 
with  a  crash  of  thunder,  Deborah  makes  an  end. 
"So  let  all  Thine  enemies  perish,  O  Lord;  but  let 
them  that  love  Him  be  as  the  sun  when  he  goeth 
forth  in  his  might." 

Between  the  ancient  and  the  modern  world,  there 
is  a  great  gulf  fixed.  Old  things  passed  away,  and  all 
things  became  new.  With  the  old  civilizations,  the 
old  literatures  came  to  an  end.  Men  still  thought, 
of  course,  and  wrote  down  what  they  thought.  But 
their  thoughts  were  turned  into  other  channels.  In 
the  sixth  century  Justinian  codified  the  Roman  Law. 
The  writings  of  the  Christian  Fathers  were  no  doubt 
religious,  but  by  no  stretch  of  imagination  could  they 
be  called  poetry.  There  was  a  long  transition  period, 
when  there  were  fightings  without  and  fears  within, 
when  the  world,  shaken  out  of  its  old  ruts,  was  trying 
to  find  itself  again,  when  men's  hands  were  busy  but 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  25 

their  brains  were  dull.  There  were  many  who 
were  concerned  about  their  souls,  but  more  and  more 
the  wilderness  and  the  monastery  came  to  offer  a 
short  and  easy  method  of  escape.  For  more  ad- 
venturous dispositions  the  Crusades  offered  an 
outlet  for  superfluous  energy,  and  combined  romance 
and  religion  in  a  way  which  could  not  but  be  popular. 
It  is  not  until  the  thirteenth  century  that  another 
great  poet  appears.  Though  there  was  dearth  of 
religious  thought  during  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
especially  of  religious  imagination,  there  was  no  lack 
of  religious  action,  or  of  a  religious  background  for 
ideas.  We  may  question  if  the  Church  went  very 
deep,  in  spite  of  the  great  Cathedrals  which  were 
the  product  of  that  time.  It  is  not  likely  that  it 
touched  the  springs  of  human  conduct  as  closely  as 
in  happier  periods.  But  that  its  influence  was  wide- 
spread there  can  be  no  doubt.  And  when  at  last, 
after  all  those  centuries  of  waiting,  the  great  poet 
came  who  is  the  link  between  the  remote  past  and 
modern  days,  he  paints  his  pictures  and  thinks  his 
thought  against  the  background  of  his  own  time. 
Dante  is  religious  through  and  through.  In  every 
line  of  the  "Divine  Comedy"  God  is  immanent. 


26  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

There  is  no  getting  away  from  Him.  His  judgments 
are  the  subject  of  the  poem.  And  with  all  that  is 
fierce  in  it,  and  terrible,  its  motive  power  is  love.  It 
is  little  enough  that  we  know  of  Beatrice ;  but  in  the 
"Vita  Nuova"  Dante  writes  that  he  hopes  to  say  of 
her  that  which  has  never  been  said  of  any  woman. 
The  "Divine  Comedy"  was  the  result. 

We  have  traversed  many  lands  and  many  cen- 
turies. We  have  found  no  great  poetry  from  which 
some  element  of  religion  was  absent,  nor  could  we 
find  it  anywhere.  There  are,  of  course,  regions  of 
the  religious  life  in  which  poetry  has  no  place,  but 
wherever  there  is  Poetry  of  the  highest  type  Religion 
cannot  be  very  far  away. 


CHAPTER  II 

ISAIAH  AMONG  THE   PROPHETS 

THERE  are  many  voices  which  clamor  to  be 
heard.  Words  of  one  sort  and  another 
force  themselves  upon  men,  and  demand  attention 
for  themselves,  jumbled  together  in  a  strange 
medley  of  discord  and  confusion,  of  impudence 
and  reverence,  of  hopelessness  and  appeal.  There 
is  a  countless  multitude  of  ever-changing  ques- 
tions which  make  up  for  us  the  mystery  and  the 
tragedy  and  the  responsibility  of  life.  There  are  the 
world-old  problems  of  sickness  and  pain,  of  doubt 
and  wretchedness  and  affliction,  of  sin  and  punish- 
ment, solution  for  which  must  still  be  sought,  though 
centuries  of  seeking  have  not  availed  to  find  an 
answer.  How  shall  we  take  our  places  in  a  world 
that  it  is  so  hard  to  understand,  and  amid  the  varying 
standards  what  is  to  be  the  measure  of  our  manhood  ? 
What  makes  success,  and  what  makes  failure? 
Where  each  one  can  do  so  little,  what  shall  we  select 


28  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

to  do?  So  they  crowd  on  one  another,  despairing, 
passionate,  indifferent  even;  eager,  hopeful,  pitiful; 
the  thousand  questions  that  have  to  do  with  life. 
There  are  many  answers  for  them,  some  of  them 
misleading  and  grotesque  enough;  but  above  the 
tumult  of  uncertain  cries  there  rises  a  louder  and 
more  commanding  voice.  Here  is  one  who  speaks 
with  authority,  for  it  is  the  word  of  the  Lord  which  he 
proclaims.  He  is  a  prophet,  a  messenger,  a  preacher 
of  righteousness,  an  interpreter  of  the  ways  of  God  to 
men.  Such  men  have  lived  in  every  age.  But  the 
Hebrew  prophets  whose  writings  are  contained  in 
the  Old  Testament  possessed  in  highest  develop- 
ment all  the  characteristics  of  their  class. 

The  earlier  prophets,  men  like  Samuel  and  Elijah, 
stand  out  distinctly  from  the  record  of  their  time. 
We  know  what  they  did,  but  not  very  much  of  what 
they  said.  They  were  men  of  affairs,  not  men  of 
letters.  The  figures  of  the  later  prophets  are  much 
more  shadowy  and  dim.  They  have  their  word  to 
say,  and  they  say  it;  but  for  themselves  they  are 
content  to  remain  in  the  shadow  which  the  heavenly 
brightness  of  their  message  casts.  But  now  and 
again  that  message  reveals  them,  and  distinguishes 


ISAIAH   AMONG  THE   PROPHETS          29 

them  from  one  another  as  well  as  from  the  outside 
world. 

In  the  early  years  of  King  Uzziah's  reign,  when  the 
kingdoms  of  Judah  and  Israel  were  still  prosperous 
and  "  at  ease,"  the  word  of  the  Lord  came  to  Amos, 
who  was  among  the  herdmen  of  Tekoa.  He  is  the 
first  of  those  whom  we  may  call  the  literary  prophets. 
Unlike  most  of  his  fellows,  he  is  no  special  type  of 
man.  Rather,  he  seems  to  stand  out  from  the  pages 
of  the  Old  Testament,  "a  colossal  figure  of  generic 
manhood."  He  is  the  possession,  not  of  any  class  or 
disposition,  but  of  the  race.  He  comes  to  the  king's 
court  at  Bethel,  at  festival  time.  Though  his  little 
book  is  not  destitute  of  visions,  it  is  as  an  apostle  of 
facts  that  he  chiefly  speaks.  Do  not  results  follow 
upon  certain  causes?  If  two  are  seen  walking  to- 
gether in  the  desert,  must  it  not  be  that  they  had 
appointed  to  meet?  Will  a  lion  roar  in  the  forest, 
when  he  hath  no  prey?  Will  a  young  lion  cry  out 
of  his  den,  if  he  have  taken  nothing?  Will  the 
prophet  speak,  unless  the  Lord  hath  commanded 
him?  Nay,  does  one  need  to  be  a  prophet,  in  the 
usual  sense  of  the  word,  to  hear  the  word  of  the 
Lord?  His  discourse  is  interrupted.  He  has  told 


30  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

unpalatable  truths.  He  has  violated  the  convention- 
alities of  religion.  He  is  a  visionary.  Amaziah,  the 
priest  of  Bethel,  makes  himself  spokesman  for  the 
rest.  "  O  thou  seer,  go,  flee  thee  away  into  the  land  of 
Judah,  and  there  eat  bread,  and  prophecy  there ;  but 
prophecy  not  any  more  at  Bethel ;  for  it  is  the  king's 
chapel,  and  it  is  the  king's  court."  Does  Amaziah, 
then,  judging  others  by  himself,  suppose  that  these 
are  mere  professional  utterances  which  Amos  has 
been  speaking?  There  is  nothing  professional 
about  him.  "I  was  no  prophet,  neither  was  I  a 
prophet's  son ;  but  I  was  an  herdman,  and  a  gatherer 
of  sycomore  fruit;  and  the  Lord  took  me  as  I 
followed  the  flock,  and  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  Go, 
prophecy  unto  my  people  Israel."  So  Amos  left  his 
flock,  and  came  to  Bethel,  and  said  what  he  had  to 
say.  Then  he  disappears.  It  was  not  for  him,  as  for 
Isaiah  or  Jeremiah,  to  watch  over  the  fortunes  of  the 
state  for  many  years.  When  he  has  done  his  work, 
there  is  no  more  to  be  said  of  him.  It  is  most  likely 
that  he  went  back  to  the  lonely  deserts  of  Tekoa,  and 
found  his  sheep  again,  and  took  up  the  thread  of  his 
interrupted  life.  He  thought  of  "Him  that  maketh 
the  seven  stars  and  Orion,  and  turneth  the  shadow  of 


ISAIAH  AMONG  THE    PROPHETS          31 

death  into  the  morning,  and  maketh  the  day  dark 
with  night,"  while  far  away,  across  the  wilderness, 
the  lights  of  Jerusalem  reminded  him  that  he  was  not 
the  sole  inhabitant  of  the  world. 

"The  Lord  took  me  as  I  followed  the  flock."  If 
there  are  many  ways  in  which  God  speaks  to  men, 
Amos  would  tell  us  that  there  is  no  man  to  whom  He 
may  not  speak.  We  shut  God  up  within  conditions, 
we  limit  Him  to  times  and  places,  we  make  such 
words  as  spiritual  and  secular  stand  not  for  com- 
plementary but  for  opposing  spheres  of  life.  Samuel 
may  hear  God's  voice,  for  he  grows  up  within  the 
precincts  of  the  temple.  To  Isaiah  and  his  brethren 
there  comes  a  special  call,  a  moment  of  extra- 
ordinary consecration,  the  power  to  apprehend  the 
sights  and  sounds  of  another  and  higher  world. 
Amos  lacks  all  this.  He  is  no  prophet,  nor  prophet's 
son.  His  only  school  has  been  the  desert.  His  com- 
panions have  been  his  sheep,  and  the  wild  beasts  of 
which  he  so  often  speaks.  His  books  are  the  bright 
Eastern  stars,  the  winds  that  blow  strong  across  the 
pasture,  the  caravans  which  come  and  go.  There  is 
nothing  technically  religious  in  such  a  life;  but 
technical  religion  is  religion  in  its  very  lowest  form. 


32  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

There  are  certain  definite  things  that  should  be  done 
for  God,  but  religion  means  not  so  much  the  doing  of 
certain  things  as  the  doing  of  all  things  in  a  certain 
way.  It  is  not  a  beautiful  garment  to  be  worn  on  holy 
days ;  it  is  the  very  breath  of  life.  And  Amos  stands 
for  just  the  preparation  that  common  life  may  bring 
to  hear  God's  word.  To  put  it  in  another  form,  he 
teaches  the  religious  responsibility  and  power  of  lay 
people.  He  is  no  prophet ;  but  he  is  commanded  to 
speak  for  God.  He  is  no  prophet's  son;  but  he 
hears  the  voice  of  God.  He  is  a  dweller  in  the  desert ; 
but  God  is  there.  His  task  is  of  the  humblest  and 
most  prosaic  kind;  but  God  took  him  as  he  went 
about  it,  and  bade  him  do  His  work.  There  have 
been  times  and  places  when  it  was  the  custom  to 
identify  the  Church  with  the  clergy.  Beginning 
perhaps  with  a  tendency  on  their  part  to  claim  its 
privileges,  it  developed  into  what  seemed  at  times 
like  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  laity  to  leave  them 
to  perform  its  duties.  But  the  difference  of  orders 
in  the  Church  is  a  difference  not  of  dignity  nor  even 
of  responsibility,  but  of  service.  God  does  not  reach 
all  men  by  the  same  methods,  nor  does  He  expect  all 
men  to  do  the  same  work  for  Him.  But  He  can 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE   PROPHETS          33 

speak  to  Amos  in  the  desert,  no  less  than  to  Samuel 
in  the  temple  or  to  David  on  the  throne. 

The  logical  order  is  not  always  the  chronological 
one.  The  Book  of  Zechariah  belongs  to  the  later 
period  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  but  that  idea  of  personal 
responsibility  which  we  have  seen  in  Amos  is  still 
here.  It  is  a  confused  book,  and  a  confusing.  At 
one  moment,  we  have  a  picture  of  security  and  con- 
fidence which  could  not  be  painted  in  more  glowing 
colors.  There  is  no  cutting-off  in  the  very  prime  of 
life.  Men  fill  out  their  appointed  time,  and  die  only 
because  they  are  worn  out,  and  have  no  longer 
strength  to  live.  The  children  need  no  watching, 
for  there  is  no  harm  that  could  come  to  them.  It  is 
a  time  when  the  very  weakest  and  most  helpless  are 
secure.  And  then,  in  another  moment,  we  have  the 
clash  of  weapons  and  the  tramp  of  marching  men. 

But  it  is  not  only  this  abrupt  change  of  subject 
which  makes  Zechariah's  book  confusing.  In  every 
part  of  it  there  is  a  use  of  metaphor  and  imagery 
which  puzzles  and  bewilders.  The  prophet  gives 
free  rein  to  his  imagination.  He  speaks  in  parables, 
and  teaches  by  pictures  which  may  have  been  ob- 
vious enough  when  they  were  drawn,  but  which  have 

3 


34  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

not  gained  in  clearness  by  the  lapse  of  centuries. 
There  is  a  man  who  rides  on  a  red  horse  among  the 
myrtle-trees.  There  is  a  man  with  a  measuring  line. 
There  are  candlesticks,  and  lamps,  and  olive-trees. 
There  are  chariots  and  crowns.  We  may  take  one 
of  these  pictures  from  the  rest,  because  it  seems  to 
characterize  the  prophet's  thought. 

He  looks  about  him,  and  he  sees  people  who  are  in 
need  of  help.  They  want  leadership  and  guidance. 
There  are  many  paths,  and  they  do  not  know  which 
path  to  take.  There  are  many  counsellors,  and  they 
do  not  know  to  whom  to  listen.  They  are  hungry  for 
the  word  of  life,  but  they  are  like  flocks  who  wander 
where  the  fields  are  parched  and  dry.  Who  can  find 
pasture  for  them?  The  prophet  takes  the  vacant 
place.  It  is  a  place  of  honor,  but  of  care  and  labor. 
He  will  give  them  what  they  need.  He  will  feed  them. 
To  hold  them  together,  to  make  them  responsive 
to  his  call,  he  takes  two  staves.  Beauty  and  Bands, 
he  calls  them.  They  are  the  aids  by  which  he  hopes 
to  do  his  work. 

It  is  true,  his  undertaking  failed.  His  staves  were 
cut  asunder  and  cast  away.  But  his  failure  was  not 
the  prophet's  fault.  Without  a  figure,  what  he  tried 


ISAIAH  AMONG   THE   PROPHETS  35 

to  say  seems  to  be  simply  this.  There  are  those  who 
are  in  trouble  and  distress,  and  they  have  been  com- 
mitted to  his  care.  He  wants  to  help  them  in  their 
perplexity,  and  to  lead  them  to  the  highest  life.  How 
can  he  do  it  ?  What  can  he  take  to  help  him  ?  First 
of  all,  he  will  point  them  to  what  is  beautiful,  and 
show  them,  what  they  will  soon  learn  for  themselves, 
how  close  is  the  connection  between  what  is  beautiful 
and  what  is  good.  And  then,  he  will  dwell  on  the 
things  that  make  men  to  be  of  one  mind  in  a  house, 
the  things  that  make  for  peace.  He  will  show  that 
selfishness  means  isolation  and  hideous  loneliness, 
that  God  Himself  has  set  the  solitary  in  families,  and 
made  of  one  blood  all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  What 
draws  men  to  one  another  will  draw  them  to  God, 
unless  it  be  degraded  and  abused. 

Beauty  and  Bands  —  neither  the  one  nor  the  other 
is  religion,  and  yet  they  have  their  work  to  do  for 
God.  They  are  staves  in  the  shepherd's  hand, 
without  which  he  would  be  hindered  and  crippled  in 
his  work.  Beauty  may  be  made  a  means  of  grace, 
an  Article  of  Religion,  as  it  were.  A  beautiful 
church  bears  its  witness  for  God  to  many  who  take 
no  part  in  what  goes  on  inside.  A  beautiful  service 


36  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

touches  springs  of  feeling  which  argument  could 
never  reach.  A  beautiful  poem  or  picture  seems 
to  make  mean  things  meaner,  unlovely  things  un- 
lovelier,  and  base  things  baser  than  they  were  be- 
fore. Satisfaction  with  what  is  low  and  degrading 
comes  usually  from  ignorance  of  what  is  better.  If 
now  an  appreciation  of  what  is  beautiful  can  be 
awakened,  appreciation  of  what  is  good  may  quickly 
follow.  And  what  is  true  of  things  is  even  truer 
when  it  comes  to  be  applied  to  people.  Goodness 
has  a  power  of  its  own.  We  honor  it,  we  respect  it, 
sometimes  we  love  it.  But  this  last  not  always.  It 
may  be  forbidding  and  severe.  There  may  be  some- 
thing icy  in  its  grasp,  and  chilling  in  its  breath. 
Though  we  might  not  be  justified  in  refusing  to  call 
it  goodness,  it  may  take  forms  which  not  only  do 
not  attract  men  to  it,  but  repel.  It  is  the  righteous- 
ness which  is  of  the  law,  with  nothing  human  in  its 
voice  or  touch.  But  when,  in  place  of  goodness,  we 
have  what  may  be  called  beauty  of  character,  that  is 
quite  different.  Things  may  be  lacking  which  ought 
not  to  be  lacking,  but  it  draws  men  to  it,  and  com- 
mands them,  whether  they  will  or  no.  The  word 
which  our  English  Bible  renders  Beauty  is  trans- 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE   PROPHETS           37 

lated  "Graciousness"  by  one  of  the  leading  scholars 
who  has  written  upon  Zechariah.  It  is  the  staff 
called  Graciousness  which  the  shepherd  takes  to 
help  him  feed  his  flock.  And  Graciousness  de- 
scribes as  well  as  any  word  that  combination  of 
qualities  which  goes  to  make  up  beauty  of  disposi- 
tion. There  is  grace,  both  in  the  Greek  and  Hebrew 
sense,  grace  human  and  divine.  There  is  the  knowl- 
edge of  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it,  of  what  to  say 
and  how  to  say  it.  There  is  the  power  of  meeting 
men  on  their  own  ground,  and  making  them  feel  at 
ease.  There  is  that  suppression  of  one's  self  which 
is  at  the  opposite  pole  from  the  vulgar  self-assertion 
which  may  be  found  in  all  classes  of  society,  from 
the  prize-fighter  to  the  theologian.  The  prize-fighter 
uses  his  fists  as  nature  gave  them  to  him.  The  theo- 
logian, who  is  oftener  only  an  ecclesiastic,  clenches 
them  about  a  pen,  and  dips  his  pen  in  gall.  Both 
alike,  they  lack  that  Graciousness  with  which  the 
shepherd  fed  his  flock.  Where  Beauty  is,  Bands 
will  be  close  by;  for  where  there  is  Graciousness, 
Sympathy  cannot  be  far  away. 

This  personal  obligation  is  no  monopoly  of  the 
prophetic  office ;  it  belongs  to  the  nation  as  a  whole. 


38  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Jerusalem  has  been  laid  desolate,  but  now  the  day  of 
restoration  is  at  hand.  It  will  have  consequences  ex- 
tending beyond  the  people  who  are  most  concerned. 
"In  those  days  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  ten  men 
shall  take  hold  out  of  all  languages  of  the  nations, 
even  shall  take  hold  of  the  skirt  of  him  that  is  a  Jew, 
saying,  '  We  will  go  with  you,  for  we  have  heard  that 
God  is  with  you.' ':  When  they  were  tried  and  hum- 
bled, then  they  could  be  alone.  They  could  pass 
alone  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow.  But  at  the 
time  of  restoration  they  could  be  alone  no  longer. 
Out  of  all  languages  of  the  nations  there  were  found 
those  to  hang  upon  them,  and  claim  some  share 
in  the  triumph  that  had  come  to  them.  Because 
God  was  with  them,  those  who  felt  their  own  need 
of  God  must  be  with  them  too. 

Amos  left  his  sheep  that  he  might  speak  God's 
word.  Zechariah  took  the  staves  that  he  might  lead 
the  flock.  There  is  the  same  sense  of  Divine  com- 
pulsion in  the  great  prophet  Jeremiah.  He  was  by 
nature  a  peaceful,  quiet  man.  He  loved  his  home 
at  Anathoth.  A  lodging-place  in  the  wilderness, 
where  he  could  have  left  the  city's  treachery  and 
tumult  far  behind,  was  all  that  he  would  have  asked. 


ISAIAH   AMONG  THE  PROPHETS           39 

Then  the  voice  of  the  Lord  sounded  in  his  ears.  At 
first  he  hesitated.  "Then  said  I,  Ah,  Lord  God, 
behold,  I  cannot  speak,  for  I  am  a  child."  He  was 
timid  and  sensitive  of  rebuke,  and  he  knew  that  there 
were  no  smooth  things  which  he  must  say.  Why 
should  he  be  a  man  of  strife  and  a  man  of  contention 
to  the  whole  earth?  But  his  natural  shrinking 
could  not  stand  against  the  call  of  God.  He  prophe- 
sied for  fifty  dreary  years.  He  was  born  at  a  time 
when  things  were  well  in  the  land,  and  he  lived  to 
see  conditions  change  from  good  to  bad,  from  bad 
to  worse,  from  worse  to  the  very  worst  which  the 
imagination  could  conceive.  There  were  times 
when  he  rebelled  against  the  fate  which  compelled 
him,  with  all  his  native  gentleness,  to  be  forever 
speaking  harsh  words  into  deaf  ears.  After  he  has 
been  buffeted  and  punished  as  a  common  criminal, 
his  patience  fails  him.  "I  am  in  derision  daily; 
every  one  mocketh  me."  He  tries  to  find  safety  in 
silence.  "Then  I  said,  I  will  not  make  mention  of 
Him,  nor  speak  any  more  in  His  name."  But  he 
was  too  genuine  a  man  to  be  able  to  escape  an  un- 
pleasant duty  by  running  away  from  it.  "His  word 
was  in  mine  heart  as  a  burning  fire  shut  up  in  my 


40  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

bones,  and  I  was  weary  with  forbearing,  and  I  could 
not  stay."  Now  and  then  there  comes  a  faint  ray  of 
hope,  but  always  the  darkness  settles  down  again. 
Jeremiah  is  a  prophet,  and  he  must  look  upon  the 
institution  of  prophecy  as  it  becomes  more  and  more 
degraded.  He  is  a  priest,  who  must  see  the  priest- 
hood growing  more  and  more  corrupt.  He  is  a 
citizen  whose  counsels  are  jeered  at  by  self-seekers, 
and  he  must  look  on,  helpless,  while  the  city  which 
he  loves  is  hurried  to  destruction  by  knaves  and  fools. 
He  puts  his  warnings  into  writing,  and  sends  them 
to  the  king;  but  the  king,  after  three  or  four  pages, 
flings  the  manuscript  into  the  fire  which  is  on  the 
hearth,  and  watches  it  as  it  crumbles  into  ashes.  He 
must  bear  all  the  sorrows  of  his  people,  and  he  has 
sorrows  of  his  own  besides.  He  is  thrust  into  the 
stocks.  He  is  thrown  into  a  foul  dungeon,  where  it 
was  a  question  whether  he  should  starve  or  strangle. 
From  the  moment  that  he  set  out  to  do  God's  work, 
his  life  is  one  long  succession  of  disappointment, 
despondency,  and  failure. 

But  it  is  just  here  that  he  surpasses  Amos  and 
Zechariah.  They  felt  the  responsibility  which  rested 
upon  them.  Jeremiah  feels  the  responsibility  which 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE    PROPHETS          41 

rests  upon  God.  Since  he  can  do  so  little,  God  must 
do  the  more.  For  himself,  he  has  nothing  to  glory 
in.  He  never  knew  the  elation  which  attends  suc- 
cess. He  had  high  ambitions,  not  for  himself,  but 
for  his  country,  and  he  saw  them  fade  and  disappear. 
He  was  in  perpetual  conflict  with  stupid  wickedness 
which  could  not  even  understand  his  point  of  view. 
His  own  work  was  a  complete  and  dismal  failure. 
But  always,  back  of  his  failure,  back  of  the  shame- 
less misdeeds  of  his  people,  which  he  can  see,  but 
which  he  is  powerless  to  prevent,  there  stands  the 
vision  of  the  glory  and  the  majesty  of  God.  There 
are  times  when  the  way  in  which  he  identifies  him- 
self with  his  Divine  master  suggests  the  New  Testa- 
ment rather  than  the  Old.  Be  it  as  it  may  be  with 
his  work  and  its  result.  But  Jeremiah  flings  himself 
on  God,  and  finds  in  Him  the  justification  for  all 
that  he  has  done  or  failed  in  doing. 

But  after  all,  we  have  not  yet  reached  the  heights 
of  prophecy.  When  Mr.  Sargent  drew  the  figures 
of  the  prophets  on  the  walls  of  the  Public  Library 
in  Boston,  it  was  no  accident  that  Isaiah  and  Hosea 
stood  out  from  all  the  rest.  All  spoke  for  God,  but 
these  two  were  separated  from  their  brethren  even 


42  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

as  the  company  of  prophets  was  separated  from 
mankind  at  large.  In  the  figure  of  Isaiah  there  is  a 
suggestion  of  that  passion  for  righteousness,  that 
power  of  seeing  far  into  the  future,  that  contempt 
for  half-way  measures,  all  of  which  meet  us  in  every 
chapter  of  his  book.  In  Hosea  we  have  a  man  of  a 
different  type,  perhaps  less  powerful,  but  no  less 
rare  and  fine.  This  is  a  man  who  has  seen  affliction, 
but,  though  he  tells  his  story,  he  does  not  call  at- 
tention to  himself.  He  seeks  no  pity  for  his  trouble, 
he  asks  no  praise  for  his  forbearance.  He  wraps 
himself  in  the  long  folds  of  his  white  garment,  and 
looks  out  on  a  blackness  of  thick  darkness  in  which 
there  is  no  light  but  God.  With  all  his  sensitiveness, 
with  his  native  yearning  for  what  is  true  and  pure 
and  good,  his  lot  is  cast  in  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  moral  death.  He  does  not  weep,  like  Jeremiah, 
for  he  must  watch  while  Ephraim  riots.  He  is  left 
alone ;  and  yet,  like  One  who  bore  his  name  in  later 
years,  he  is  not  alone,  because  the  Father  is  with 
him. 

It  is  in  the  depth  and  fulness  of  Hosea's  religious 
nature  that  we  may  gain  our  best  impression  of  the 
man.  He  is  under  no  delusions  as  to  the  reality  and 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE   PROPHETS          43 

ghastliness  of  sin.  It  is  all  about  him.  It  has  wrecked 
his  home,  and  made  his  children  outcasts.  Our 
hearts  are  made  to  bleed  for  poor  little  Lo-ruhamah, 
the  child  who  may  not  know  a  father's  love.  But 
while  he  knows,  and  knows  in  his  own  person,  the 
hatefulness  of  sin,  he  knows  even  more  surely  the  ten- 
derness and  long-suffering  of  God.  His  faith  brings 
him  even  to  an  understanding  of  his  own  misfortunes, 
usually  the  last  resting-place  of  unbelief.  The  wind 
and  storm  may  yet  fulfil  God's  word.  In  the  darkest 
passages  of  his  life,  with  a  boldness  which  startles 
and  surprises,  he  sees  the  working  of  God's  hand. 
In  the  very  hideousness  of  the  situation  he  finds,  not 
an  occasion  for  cursing  God  and  asking  for  himself 
that  he  might  die,  but  an  opportunity  for  watchful  and 
self-forgetful  love.  As  with  Jeremiah,  though  the 
story  itself  belongs  unmistakably  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  is  here. 
"  When  he  was  yet  a  great  way  off,  his  father  ran  to 
meet  him."  So  might  it  be  with  the  faithless  wife 
who  had  left  her  husband,  or  with  a  faithless  people 
who  had  wandered  from  their  God.  The  sin  was 
great,  but  love  was  greater  still. 
In  Hosea's  dealing  with  his  people,  we  have  the 


44  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

same  chaos  of  affairs,  the  same  Spirit  of  God  brood- 
ing over  the  face  of  the  abyss.  The  inhabitants  of 
the  Northern  Kingdom  were  familiar  with  every 
detail  of  indecency  and  dishonor.  The  yellowest  of 
our  yellow  journals,  though  they  have  their  own 
methods  of  making  crime  distinguished  and  brutish- 
ness  interesting,  have  no  more  dismal  pictures  to  set 
before  us  than  those  which  we  may  find  in  the  pages 
of  Hosea's  little  book.  There  is  not  one  line  which 
would  lead  us  to  suppose  that  his  words  were  ever 
heeded  or  obeyed.  But  what  he  might  be  able  to 
accomplish  lay  with  God.  It  was  for  him  to  bear  his 
testimony.  And  so  out  of  the  witch's  cauldron  which 
he  was  compelled  to  stir,  full  of  misery  and  shameful 
ignorance  and  naked  vice  and  overbearing  crime, 
there  comes  a  message  from  the  loving  and  forgiving 
God.  "  I  will  heal  their  backsliding,  I  will  love  them 
freely;  for  mine  anger  is  turned  from  them.  I  will 
be  as  the  dew  unto  Israel;  he  shall  blossom  as  the 
lily,  and  cast  forth  his  roots  as  Lebanon.  His 
branches  shall  spread,  and  his  beauty  shall  be  as  the 
olive-tree,  and  his  smell  as  Lebanon." 

It  is  Hosea's  knowledge  of  God,  and  the  intense- 
ness  of  his  religious  disposition,  that  give  significance 


ISAIAH   AMONG  THE   PROPHETS          45 

to  his  pictures  of  the  corruption  of  his  time.  There 
is  impurity  of  every  sort,  the  wildest  license  and  the 
freest  rein.  There  is  deceit,  and  fraud,  and  violence. 
There  is  an  impudent  playing  at  religiousness  which 
apes  religion.  There  is  a  casting-off  of  personal 
responsibility,  a  worship  of  cheap  success,  a  fixed 
doctrine  that  any  end  justifies  any  means.  All  these 
are  faults  of  high  antiquity,  but  their  eye  is  yet  un- 
dimmed,  and  their  natural  strength  is  unabated  still. 
But  with  Hosea  the  thought  is  not  so  much  that  bad 
deeds  have  been  done.  Rather  it  is  that  men  have 
failed  to  take  their  places  as  the  children  of  God; 
but  that  even  sin,  with  all  its  train  of  hideous  con- 
sequences, cannot  destroy  God's  love. 

There  were  other  prophets,  of  course,  some  of 
them  of  towering  stature,  but  those  whom  we  have 
considered  mark  the  movement  of  prophecy  from 
the  recognition  of  individual  responsibility  by  Amos 
to  that  trust  in  the  power  of  God  which  was  Jere- 
miah's solace,  and  in  the  love  of  God  which  was 
Hosea's  only  hope.  Isaiah  was  the  most  conspicu- 
ous, as  he  seems  to  have  been  the  most  thoroughly 
representative,  of  them  all.  He  lived  in  Jerusalem 
later  than  Amos  and  Hosea,  but  before  Jeremiah 


46  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

and  Zechariah,  at  a  time  when  prophecy  was  well 
established,  but  before  it  had  begun  to  show  any 
marks  of  weakness  or  decay.  His  eternal  subject 
is  the  righteousness  of  God,  but  the  misdeeds  of  men 
were  constantly  before  his  eyes.  He  did  not  seek 
them,  but  they  flung  themselves  upon  him  as  the 
raging  waves  of  the  sea  assault  the  coast.  Living 
where  he  did  and  when  he  did,  there  were  times 
when  it  must  have  seemed  as  if  the  language  of 
denunciation  were  his  mother-tongue.  He  paints 
Jerusalem  in  dreary  colors.  The  city,  where  of  all 
the  cities  in  the  world  justice  might  be  looked  for, 
was  full  of  murderers.  Its  high  officials  were  "com- 
panions of  thieves."  Commercialism  was  all  but 
universal,  not  only  in  politics  but  in  every  walk  of 
life.  Gain  was  the  highest  motive  which  appealed 
to  men.  The  head  and  the  heart  bowed  down  be- 
fore the  pocket.  A  certain  kind  of  religion  was  not 
unfashionable,  but  it  seems  to  have  been  no  more 
than  a  fussy  formalism.  The  women  shared  the 
general  demoralization.  Not  only  did  they  fail  to 
set  before  the  men  a  higher  standard,  but  they  made 
bad  worse.  Their  extravagance,  their  vulgar  os- 
tentation, the  flaunting  pride  with  which  they  tried 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE   PROPHETS          47 

to  make  up  for  their  total  lack  of  self-respect  —  all 
these  the  prophet  describes  with  piercing  keenness. 
They  possessed  every  ornament  except  the  ornament 
of  a  meek  and  quiet  spirit.  The  city  was  holy,  but 
the  citizens  were  corrupt.  God  was  just  and  right- 
eous, but  those  who  should  have  been  His  subjects 
were  extortioners  and  cheats.  This  was  the  con- 
trast which  met  the  prophet's  view. 

It  may  be  that  there  were  some  about  him  who 
wondered  why  he  should  speak  so  sternly  of  evils  for 
which  he  was  not  responsible,  and  many  of  which 
were  quite  beyond  his  help.  He  tells  his  reasons. 
Whether  or  not  they  are  satisfactory  to  others,  they 
will  at  least  help  to  satisfy  himself,  and  keep  his  heart 
from  failing.  He  looks  back  over  some  years  of 
active  work,  in  which  there  has  been  much  effort 
and  but  slight  accomplishment.  He  looks  forward 
to  a  future  uncertain,  of  course,  as  the  future  always 
is,  but  in  which  there  is  very  little  promise  of  better 
times.  And  then  he  sets  down  for  all  what  until  now 
had  been  his  own  possession.  In  the  midst  of  his 
career  he  goes  back  to  its  beginning,  and  describes 
an  experience  which  explains  why  his  life  has  been 
what  it  is,  and  why  no  other  life  was  possible.  It 


48  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

was  not  self-righteousness  which  made  him  the  ac- 
cuser of  his  brethren.  He  does  not  bewail  their  sins 
that  he  may  contrast  them  with  the  glitter  of  his  own 
virtues.  He  is  no  fugitive  champion,  representing 
nothing,  entering  the  lists  without  equipment,  con- 
tending against  he  knows  not  what.  His  life  is  one 
which  he  has  chosen  for  himself,  but  he  is  not  him- 
self his  own  horizon.  "  In  the  year  that  King  Uzziah 
died,  I  saw  also  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne,  high 
and  lifted  up,  and  His  train  filled  the  temple."  There 
came  to  the  prophet  a  definite  vision  at  a  definite 
time.  One  day  he  went  about  his  work  like  other 
people.  The  next  he  was  overpowered  by  such  a 
realization  of  the  Divine  holiness  that  all  other 
things  were  crowded  out,  and  his  life  was  turned 
into  a  new  channel.  The  prophet  paints  the  picture 
in  the  most  brilliant  colors.  The  heavenly  glory 
filled  the  temple.  The  Lord  was  high  and  lifted  up, 
above  the  changes  and  chances  of  the  world.  About 
the  throne  were  seraphims,  strange  heavenly  crea- 
tures, all  wings  and  voice,  ready  for  service  and  for 
praise.  They  veiled  their  faces  from  the  radiant 
glory.  They  held  themselves  back  from  wandering 
hither  and  thither,  that  they  might  be  prepared  on 


ISAIAH   AMONG  THE    PROPHETS          49 

the  instant  to  do  God's  work.  But  when  He  spoke, 
there  were  wings  with  which  they  might  make  haste 
to  do  His  bidding.  They  are  not  silent  in  their  lofty 
place.  Those  who  are  so  close  to  God  cannot  but 
worship  Him.  It  is  only  those  who  are  far  away 
from  Him  who  can  be  indifferent  to  His  majesty  and 
power.  "Holy,  holy,  holy,  is  the  Lord  of  hosts." 
And  others  make  answer — "The  whole  earth  is  full  of 
His  glory."  Then  from  the  throne  itself  there  comes  a 
voice  of  approval  and  acceptance,  so  loud  that  the 
threshold  of  the  door  is  shaken,  and  the  temple  is  filled 
with  the  smoke  of  the  incense  which  ascends  to  God. 
This  was  the  prophet's  vision.  It  was  the  holiness 
of  God,  and  not  the  sinfulness  of  men,  which  took 
possession  of  him.  Is  it  strange  that  his  first  feeling 
was  one  of  terror?  He  is  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and 
he  dwells  in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean  lips. 
What  has  he  to  do  with  such  a  vision?  What  is 
there,  either  in  himself  or  his  surroundings,  that  it 
should  be  given  him  to  see  the  King,  the  Lord  of 
hosts  ?  In  such  a  presence,  there  is  need  of  purifica- 
tion. And  so  he  tells  us  of  the  seraph  who  brings 
the  glowing  coal  from  off  the  altar,  and  lays  it  on  his 
mouth,  that  the  heavenly  flame  may  burn  away  all 

4 


50  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

earthly  dross.  Before  he  is  suffered  to  speak  for  God, 
he  must  be  made  fit  to  speak.  The  vision  of  God's 
holiness  must  be  completed  by  a  vision  of  His  ability 
to  fit  men  for  His  use.  Isaiah  has  seen  God's  glory. 
Now  he  hears  God's  voice.  "I  heard  the  voice  of  the 
Lord,  saying,  Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go 
for  us?"  It  is  not  a  command.  It  is  not  even  a  re- 
quest. If  we  may  say  so,  it  is  only  a  statement  of  the 
Divine  need,  a  confession  that  God  must  look  to 
men  to  help  Him  in  His  work.  But  this  is  the  very 
highest  dignity  of  manhood.  The  very  thought  that 
God  would  deign  to  speak  to  men  at  all  seemed 
worthy  of  wonder,  in  those  centuries  before  the  first 
Christmas  day,  when  the  Son  of  God  was  born  into 
the  world  and  was  found  in  fashion  as  a  man.  That 
He  could  need  men  filled  life  with  new  glory.  And 
when  Isaiah  hears  this  word,  there  is  not  a  moment's 
hesitation.  Whom  should  God  send,  but  the  man 
who  had  seen  the  heavenly  radiance,  who  had  heard  the 
Divine  voice?  "Then  said  I,  Here  am  I,  send  me." 
This  is  Isaiah's  apology  for  his  life.  He  had  to 
fight  with  fools,  than  which  there  can  be  nothing 
more  trying  to  men's  souls.  He  had  to  reason  with 
those  who  had  no  minds.  Again  and  again  he  cast 


ISAIAH   AMONG   THE   PROPHETS          51 

his  pearls  before  swine,  and  gave  that  which  was 
holy  to  the  dogs.  He  was  the  mock  of  drunkards, 
the  scorn  of  vulgar  revellers.  His  heavenly  visions 
were  disregarded  for  crude  words  of  cheap  sensation- 
mongers.  There  were  times  when  the  highest  places 
were  filled  by  the  lowest  men.  A  thousand  schemes 
must  be  debated,  when  the  way  lay  plain.  There 
was  the  confusion  of  incompetency,  the  unrest  which 
always  attends  those  whose  actions  have  no  con- 
trolling motive.  But  Isaiah  had  his  message  to  de- 
liver, and  he  delivered  it.  How  could  he  withhold 
that  which  had  been  committed  to  him  only  in  trust  ? 
If  there  are  those  who  are  disposed  to  find  fault  with 
his  vehemence  and  vigor,  it  is  not  his  vehemence, 
but  God's.  He  has  the  respect  for  personal  obliga- 
tion that  Amos  had,  and  Zechariah's  sense  of  na- 
tional responsibility,  and  Jeremiah's  trust  in  God, 
and  Hosea's  certainty  of  the  redeeming  power  of 
God's  love.  But  more  than  this,  it  is  that  the  Lord 
has  opened  the  gates  of  heaven,  and  taken  Isaiah 
into  His  confidence.  The  prophet  whose  feet  are 
planted  squarely  on  the  earth  is  admitted  to  the 
heavenly  point  of  view.  From  this  high  vantage- 
ground,  Isaiah  sets  out  to  do  his  work. 


CHAPTER   III 

BROWNING  AMONG  THE   POETS 

TUST  as  Isaiah  can  best  be  understood  as  one 
%J  of  a  group  of  Hebrew  prophets,  so  Browning 
takes  his  place  among  a  company  of  English 
poets.  One  generation  succeeds  another,  and  poet 
after  poet  interprets  to  his  contemporaries  those 
great  ideas  which  form  the  soul  of  poetry.  Words- 
worth follows  Milton.  Tennyson  follows  Spenser. 
Browning  would  not  have  been  what  he  was  if  Shake- 
speare had  not  gone  before  him.  Not  indeed  that 
any  such  towering  eminence  can  be  claimed  for 
Browning  as  for  the  elder  poet.  Shakespeare  might 
have  belonged  to  any  country  or  to  any  time.  When- 
ever or  wherever  he  might  have  appeared,  it  would 
have  been  as  an  intellectual  miracle,  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for,  not  to  be  explained  by  the  common 
standards  of  men's  thought.  His  writings  tell  us 
very  little  about  himself  —  the  best  of  them  nothing 
at  all.  But  he  is  concerned  with  nothing  smaller 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS           53 

than  humanity  itself.  If  there  were  anyone,  any- 
where, so  audacious  or  so  dull  of  mind  as  to  deny 
his  power,  it  might  be  said  of  him,  as  Antigone  said 
to  Creon,  that  we  bear  the  charge  of  folly  from  a 
fool.  The  judgment  would  be  universal  —  the 
semper,  ubique,  et  ab  omnibus  of  anything  that  could 
pretend  to  literary  criticism. 

It  is  true  that  Shakespeare  has  his  limitations, 
but  that  which  is  perhaps  the  most  obvious  and 
striking  of  them  all  is  apparent  rather  than  real. 
A  student  of  literature  has  written  an  essay,  —  and 
a  very  good  essay,  too  —  to  which  he  has  given  the 
title,  "The  Absence  of  Religion  in  Shakespeare." 
But  we  must  be  catholic  in  our  use  of  words  when 
we  have  to  do  with  such  a  man.  If  we  give  Religion 
some  of  those  limited  and  narrow  meanings  which 
sectaries  of  one  sort  and  another  have  delighted  to 
force  upon  it  we  might  look  for  it  in  vain.  Shake- 
speare is  no  sermon-writer,  no  controversialist  nor 
exhorter.  He  never  mounts  the  pulpit-stairs.  He 
takes  the  Church  for  granted,  but  he  is  no  defender 
of  the  faith;  the  Church  must  fight  her  own  battles 
for  all  of  him.  The  recognition  of  the  duty  that 
men  owe  to  God  in  the  mere  acknowledgment  of 


54  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

their  dependence  upon  Him  is  wholly  lacking. 
Ferdinand  asks  Miranda  her  name,  "chiefly  that 
he  may  set  it  in  his  prayers,"  but  it  is  Miranda 
who  is  the  object  of  his  homage.  Gratiano,  the 
roysterer,  describes  the  correct  conduct  which  he 
purposes,  in  which  prayer-books,  and  sober  habits, 
and  loud  amens  play  a  large  part.  But  this  is  a 
cloak  —  as  Polonius  puts  it,  sugaring  o'er  the  devil 
himself  with  devotion's  visage.  In  portraying  the 
devotion  of  a  lover  to  his  mistress  Shakespeare  is 
unexcelled,  and  what  he  says  by  Romeo  and  many 
others  he  gathers  up  and  raises  to  its  highest  terms 
in  those  sonnets  which  contain  his  only  hint  at 
autobiography.  But  this  is  as  far  as  he  goes.  In 
all  his  writing,  and  he  shows  us  many  men  speak- 
ing with  many  mouths,  there  is  not  one  passage 
that  could  be  called  devotional.  Those  who  are 
seeking  for  an  expression  of  the  soul's  outpouring 
of  itself  to  God  must  look  for  it  elsewhere. 

Again,  there  is  an  absence  of  theology  which  is 
in  striking  contrast  to  the  great  poets  of  that  cen- 
tury which,  for  so  many  years,  we  called  our  own. 
There  are  certain  tenets  to  which  Shakespeare 
makes  occasional  allusion,  and  which  he  seems 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  55 

to  take  entirely  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  that  is 
all.  Henry  IV  recognizes  the  doctrine  of  the  Atone- 
ment. Maria,  in  the  midst  of  her  laughter  at  the 
unfortunate  Malvolio,  drops  the  casual  remark  that 
every  Christian  means  to  be  saved  by  believing 
rightly.  But,  while  Christianity  is  often  implicit, 
it  is  nowhere  set  forth  in  orderly  arrangement.  Nor 
is  this  absence  of  the  devotional  and  the  theological 
made  up  for  by  the  ecclesiasticism  which  some- 
times essays  to  take  the  place  of  one  or  both  of 
these.  There  are  some  who  ask  no  questions,  if 
only  the  Church  be  held  in  sufficient  honor.  That 
is  enough.  In  Shakespeare's  plays  the  Church  is 
often  presented,  but  the  atmosphere  of  his  pages 
is  not  that  which  Miss  Charlotte  M.  Yonge  was 
wont  to  breathe.  He  shows  us  bishops,  archbishops, 
and  cardinals,  but  as  we  look  at  them  we  are  re- 
minded of  the  little  boy  who  was  asked  if  he  had 
ever  seen  a  bishop,  and  who  replied  that  he  did 
not  know ;  that  he  might  have  seen  one,  and  thought 
he  was  only  a  common  man.  Shakespeare's  eccle- 
siastics cannot  awaken  religious  enthusiasm.  They 
illustrate  the  weakness  of  the  clerical  character 
without  its  strength.  They  command  the  respect 


56  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

due  to  their  official  position,  but  nothing  more. 
Sometimes  they  are  weak,  sometimes  they  are 
wicked,  and  if  a  man  were  to  derive  his  sole  concep- 
tion of  the  Church  from  Shakespeare  he  would  be 
justified  in  holding  it  in  slight  regard.  Neither 
Cardinal  Beaufort,  with  his  arrogance,  nor  Parson 
Evans,  with  his  loose  companions,  could  lift  men  to 
a  higher  plane  of  thought  and  action.  And  the 
Church's  defenders  do  it  more  harm  than  good,  as 
when  we  find  the  tipsy  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek 
threatening  to  beat  Malvolio  like  a  dog  because  he 
is  a  Puritan. 

These  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  Religion 
is  wont  to  manifest  itself,  along  which  Shakespeare 
has  not  followed.  But  we  have  not  yet  exhausted 
Religion's  scope.  It  calls  no  doubt  for  prayer  and 
preaching,  for  creeds  and  churches,  and  one  who 
should  deny  this  might  well  be  set  down,  not  only 
as  unreligious,  but  as  irreligious.  But  Shakespeare 
denies  none  of  these.  Rather,  he  takes  them  all 
for  granted,  and  then  goes  about  that  which  is  his 
chief  concern.  He  has  not  much  to  say  of  the  re- 
lation which  man  holds  to  God,  but  he  shows  us 
in  a  thousand  ways  his  relation  to  his  neighbor. 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  57 

He  does  not  exhort  to  the  performance  of  duty,  but 
he  paints  conscience  at  its  work  as  no  professional 
preacher  has  ever  done.  The  future  life  does  not 
enter  very  much  into  the  plan  of  his  work,  but  no 
man  has  depicted  the  present  life  with  greater 
fidelity  to  truth.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
the  mystic,  the  ecclesiastic,  the  theologian,  and  the 
exhorter  divide  between  them  all  that  could  prop- 
erly be  called  Religion.  When  St.  James  attempted 
to  define  it  in  short  compass  he  passed  beyond  these 
regions.  "Pure  religion  and  undefiled  before  God 
and  the  Father  is  this,  To  visit  the  fatherless  and 
widows  in  their  affliction,  and  to  keep  one's  self 
unspotted  from  the  world."  This,  of  course,  is  a 
personal  formula,  to  regulate  one's  conduct  from 
day  to  day.  But  it  is  quite  capable  of  wider  adapta- 
tion, and  when  we  apply  it  to  literary  work  it  seems 
to  be  a  call  to  sympathy  and  to  proportion.  "  En- 
large the  place  of  thy  tent,  and  let  them  stretch 
forth  the  curtains  of  thine  habitations."  This  was 
the  cry  of  the  ancient  prophet,  and  it  is  what  our 
greatest  poet  is  forever  compelling  us  to  do.  He 
lifts  the  clouds,  and  broadens  our  horizon.  He 
opens  our  eyes  so  that  we  have  clear  vision  where 


58  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

before  we  had  seen  men  but  as  trees  walking.  He 
sets  things  in  their  right  perspective  so  far  as  he 
deals  with  them  at  all.  He  takes  possession  of  the 
imagination,  and  makes  its  desolate  cities  to  be  in- 
habited. We  cannot  say  of  him  that  he  is  a  poet 
of  the  Church,  or  of  the  soul,  but  his  field  is  the  world, 
without  which  Church  and  soul  alike  could  have 
no  place.  If  Religion  be  confined  to  the  Thirty- 
Nine  Articles  or  the  Westminster  Confession, 
Shakespeare  is  not  religious.  If  God  absents  Him- 
self from  the  world  except  on  Sundays,  and  even 
then  does  not  venture  forth  beyond  church-doors, 
Shakespeare  is  not  religious.  If  Religion  means 
severity  towards  weakness,  and  crossing  the  street 
that  one's  eyes  may  not  be  offended  by  the  sight  of 
some  common  wayfarer,  Shakespeare  is  not  reli- 
gious. But  if  Religion,  besides  those  accepted  mean- 
ings where  Shakespeare  does  not  pretend  to  follow 
very  far,  means  also  to  have  a  sane  and  far-reaching 
outlook  upon  life;  to  have  broad  sympathy  with 
those  who,  in  all  their  weakness  and  temptation, 
are  yet  God's  children;  to  know  good  from  evil, 
and  light  from  darkness ;  to  point  out  that  the  wages 
of  sin  is  death,  even  though  it  be  done  sometimes 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  59 

in  merry  mood;  if  it  is  religious  to  cherish  friends, 
and  to  be  glad  at  love  received  or  given;  if  it  is  re- 
ligious to  see  in  past  and  present,  in  history  and  in 
life,  the  working  of  the  hand  of  God ;  then  Shake- 
speare is  religious.  It  does  not  matter  that  he  does 
not  preach.  After  all,  there  are  better  places  than 
the  stage  for  that.  It  does  not  matter  that  he  is  not 
a  creedmaker.  That  has  always  been  a  dangerous 
business,  and  is  so  still.  If  we  seek  for  aids  to  de- 
votion, we  may  read  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  or 
the  "Imitation  of  Christ."  But  Shakespeare,  as  no 
other  man  has  ever  done,  points  out  for  us  the  re- 
ligion that  cannot  be  separated  from  common  life. 

Where  Shakespeare  planted,  later  poets  have 
reaped.  Some  used  his  thoughts,  some  used  his 
words,  in  some  it  is  not  easy  to  trace  his  influence 
directly,  but  we  are  none  the  less  sure  that  it  is 
there.  He  is  the  gate  through  which  all  who  would 
enter  the  enchanted  fields  must  pass.  After  his 
death,  and  Milton's,  there  was  a  long  interval  dur- 
ing which  the  Muse  of  Poetry  refrained  her  soul, 
and  kept  it  low.  But  in  the  nineteenth  century  the 
former  sluggishness  was  followed  by  a  time  of  great 
activity  in  England,  along  all  lines.  The  stage- 


60  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

coach  and  the  tallow  candle  gave  way  before  the 
miracles  of  modern  science.  In  the  Church,  the 
Oxford  Movement  of  1833  stirred  men's  hearts, 
and  twenty  years  later  Maurice  and  Robertson  and 
Kingsley  quickened  their  minds.  Poetry  entered 
vigorously  into  this  new  life.  There  was  Burns, 
bringing  a  nation  to  the  consciousness  of  itself  with 
his  homely  "Westlan'  jingle;"  and  Scott,  writing 
as  if  to  the  sound  of  martial  music;  and  Byron, 
picturing  in  charming  style  the  joys  of  hopelessness; 
and  Coleridge,  saying  indeed  hi  verse  not  many 
things,  but  much.  Keats  brought  to  modern  Eng- 
land something  of  the  atmosphere  of  ancient  Greece, 
and  Shelley  was  idol  or  bugbear,  according  to  men's 
point  of  view.  But  in  that  path  where  Poetry  and 
Religion  walk  together,  the  first  great  poet  of  this 
new  time  was  William  Wordsworth. 

As  with  every  other  poet,  there  are  many  times 
when  Wordsworth  is  not  at  his  best.  He  is  encum- 
bered with  a  great  deal  of  literary  baggage,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  called  it.  Sometimes  he  is  pom- 
pous, sometimes  he  is  intolerably  dull,  sometimes 
his  simplicity  becomes  grotesque.  We  feel  that  the 
horse  who  raised  hoof  after  hoof,  and  never  stopped, 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  6r 

might  have  belonged  to  "Alice  in  Wonderland." 
Strorks  the  rhinoceros  and  Rikki-tikki-tavi  the  mon- 
goose each  has  his  place  in  his  own  kind  of  literature, 
but  the  Ass  who  is  the  joint-hero  in  "Peter  Bell"  is 
treated  too  seriously  by  the  poet  for  the  rest  of  us 
to  accord  him  the  respect  which  he  deserves. 

But  it  is  ill  business  to  dwell  on  defects  when  so 
many  and  so  great  virtues  lie  ready  to  our  hand. 
That  Wordsworth  is  often  dull  means  nothing.  In 
the  first  place,  he  was  born  into  a  dull  and  wooden 
world,  though  it  was  by  no  means  dull  and  wooden 
when  he  left  it.  Again,  he  was  a  teacher  always. 
He  wishes  to  be  considered  that  or  nothing.  And 
dulness,  in  some  sort,  must  be  the  teacher's  privi- 
lege and  prerogative,  unless  the  school-time  is  to  be 
one  long  holiday.  Wordsworth's  explicit  account  of 
his  poetry  is  that  it  is  "to  console  the  afflicted;  to 
add  sunshine  to  daylight  by  making  the  happy 
happier;  to  teach  the  young  and  the  gracious  of 
every  age  to  see,  to  think  and  feel,  and  therefore  to 
become  more  actively  and  securely  virtuous."  All 
this  is  edifying,  but  if  it  be  compared  with  the  ad- 
ventures of  Achilles  or  of  Don  Juan,  on  their  own 
terms,  it  must  suffer  by  the  comparison. 


62  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Comparison  of  this  sort,  however,  is  absurd. 
Wordsworth  has  scant  respect  for  those  who  are 
heroes  by  profession.  It  is  the  adventure  of  the 
mind,  not  of  the  body,  for  which  he  cares.  The 
atmosphere  of  his  work  is  quiet  to  the  very  last  de- 
gree. In  "The  Excursion,"  for  example,  the  poet's 
whole  purpose  is  not  only  ethical,  but  sacramental. 

"Of  Truth,  of  Grandeur,  Beauty,  Love,  and  Hope, 
And  Melancholy  Fear  subdued  by  Faith; 
Of  blessed  consolations  in  distress; 
Of  moral  strength,  and  intellectual  Power;" 

these  things,  and  others  like  them,  are  the  announced 
subjects  of  the  poem.  The  very  scenery  is  set 
against  a  religious  background.  We  read  of  Hebrew 
prophets  and  the  Scottish  Church,  of  the  lonely 
chapel  in  the  dale,  the  churchyard  among  the  moun- 
tains, the  pastor,  who  "chose  the  calm  delights  of 
unambitious  piety,  and  learning's  solid  dignity." 
There  is  the  poet's  thanksgiving  for  his  own  peace- 
ful lot.  He  is  a  man  "of  cheerful  yesterdays  and 
confident  to-morrows;"  no  doubt  because  his  mind 
is  richly  stored,  and  he  has  no  leanings  toward  "the 
tedium  of  fantastic  idleness."  There  is  the  pro- 
pounding of  those  questions  which  men  have  always 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  63 

asked,  which  the  pastor  answers  with  mild  ortho- 
doxy. There  are  musings  over  the  quiet  resting- 
places  of  the  dead.  There  is  the  looking  forward 
and  the  looking  back,  that  idea  of  the  power  of  the 
past  over  the  present,  of  the  unity  and  solidarity  of 
life,  of  the  connection  of  things  and  thoughts  with 
one  another,  which  we  find  appearing  in  all  of 
Wordsworth's  poetry  in  the  most  unlooked  for  ways 
and  places,  and  which  is  raised  to  its  highest  terms, 
and  developed  with  surpassing  beauty,  in  the  famous 
"Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality  from  Recol- 
lections of  Early  Childhood." 

In  Wordsworth's  articles  of  poetic  faith  there  are 
two  main  doctrines.  One  is  the  sacredness  and 
living  power  of  Nature.  The  other  is  the  worth  of 
Man.  As  with  many  another  preacher,  his  teach- 
ing is  often  most  valuable  when  it  is  least  obvious. 
The  "Ecclesiastical  Sonnets"  are  ecclesiastical,  and 
the  "Lines  written  at  Tintern  Abbey"  are  not. 
But  it  is  "Tintern  Abbey"  that  shows  us  the  depths 
of  the  poet's  religious  nature. 

These  two  ideas  of  his  often  blend  into  one  an- 
other, and  become  the  two  sides  of  one  great  truth. 
To  say  that  Wordsworth  loved  the  country,  as 


64  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Virgil  loved  it,  would  be  far  too  little.  Its  charms 
were  ever  with  him,  "a  note  of  enchantment"  amid 
the  most  unlovely  scenes.  To  Wordsworth  Nature 
was  more  than  dear.  She  was  holy.  For  those  who 
were  blind  to  her,  who  looked  upon  her  as  a  stranger 
and  an  alien,  no  condemnation  could  be  too  severe. 

"Great  God.    I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

But  of  Wordsworth  himself  it  could  never  be  said 
that  he  saw  little  in  Nature  that  was  his.  He  pos- 
sessed her,  and  he  was  possessed  by  her  in  turn. 
There  may  be  some  to  whom  his  enthusiasm  for 
Nature  will  seem  unnatural,  if  the  expression  be 
not  too  paradoxical.  No  man  can  escape  altogether 
from  the  influence  of  his  environment,  and  the 
dweller  in  dingy  city  streets,  to  whom  the  country 
is  only  so  much  space  that  separates  him  from  an- 
other city,  may  find  it  impossible  even  to  under- 
stand the  poet's  feelings.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  the 
reader's  misfortune,  and  not  the  poet's  fault.  Again, 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  65 

there  have  been  those  who  have  called  Wordsworth's 
teaching  concerning  Nature  Pantheism,  the  losing 
of  God  through  identifying  Him  with  His  creation. 
But  is  not  Pantheism  one  of  those  vague  names 
which  men  use  when  they  wish  to  cast  blame  upon 
what  they  understand  imperfectly,  or  what  they  do 
not  understand  at  all?  There  is  a  class  of  words 
which  we  are  wont  to  employ,  to  use  Kipling's 
phrase,  to  "make  a  magic."  Unitarian  is  such  a 
word.  There  were  some,  of  great  ingenuity  and 
highly  developed  imaginative  powers,  who  applied 
it  to  Phillips  Brooks.  His  thoughts  were  not  their 
thoughts,  his  point  of  view  was  not  their  point  of 
view,  and,  although  nothing  could  be  clearer  than 
his  published  utterances  regarding  the  Divinity  of 
Christ,  Unitarian  served  as  a  convenient  epithet  of 
reproach.  Ritualist,  with  some,  is  such  a  word; 
and  Latitudinarian,  with  others.  Higher  Criticism 
is  a  phrase  that  can  throw  into  hysterics  the  igno- 
rant pious  of  a  certain  type.  They  delight  in  speak- 
ing of  it  as  the  "so-called  Higher  Criticism,"  as  if 
one  were  to  speak  of  a  so-called  horse,  or  a  so-called 
chair,  or  a  so-called  sunrise.  They  do  not  know 
that  it  may  be  the  most  innocent  thing  in  the  world. 

5 


66  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Pantheism  belongs  to  the  same  class.  It  may,  no 
doubt,  mean  something  most  unpleasant  and  most 
reprehensible.  It  may  mean  nothing  at  all.  In 
Wordsworth's  case,  whatever  may  be  his  thought  of 
Nature,  his  poems  on  other  subjects  must  acquit 
him  of  the  charge  of  losing  sight  of  the  personality 
of  God. 

But  Nature,  with  all  his  reverence  and  affection 
for  it,  is  only  half  of  Wordsworth's  mental  store. 
It  involves  the  recognition  of  God,  but  the  world 
must  be  a  lonely  place  until  we  take  account  in  it 
of  men  of  like  passions  with  ourselves.  We  cannot 
love  the  unseen  God  unless  we  love  the  brothers  who 
are  all  about  us.  And  Wordsworth  never  speaks 
more  lovingly  of  Nature,  and  with  a  keener  and 
deeper  appreciation  of  her  power,  than  when  he 
makes  her  "fall  back  into  a  second  place,"  and 
recognizes  frankly  that  she  is  not  the  end  of  life, 
that  she  is  not,  to  put  it  into  theological  phrase,  suffi- 
cient for  salvation.  Though  she  has  life  in  herself, 
it  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  another  kind  of  life. 
We  come  then  to  the  poet's  second  doctrine,  of  the 
worth  of  Man.  He  is  no  aristocrat.  The  obscure 
man,  the  unfortunate  man,  the  simple  child,  all 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  67 

draw  their  breath  from  God.  He  cares  nothing 
for  those  accidental  trappings  with  which  some  men 
are  clothed.  He  does  not  call  it  high  life  when  he 
means  high  living,  nor  talk  about  the  lower  classes 
when  he  means  the  poor.  There  are  none  of  those 
lords  and  ladies  in  his  poems  who  walk  with  so 
much  dignity  through  Shakespeare's  pages.  In- 
deed, it  seems  as  if  he  took  pains  to  go  to  the  oppo- 
site extreme.  The  Idiot  Boy,  the  Cumberland 
Beggar,  Michael  the  old  shepherd,  "the  miserable 
mother  by  the  Thorn,"  —  he  asks  our  interest  in 
these  and  our  sympathy  for  them,  and  just  as  much 
of  it  as  Shakespeare  could  have  asked  for  King 
Lear,  or  the  Greek  poets  for  the  "dark  sorrows  of 
the  line  of  Thebes."  It  is  the  hidden  man  of  the 
heart  with  which  he  is  concerned;  and  where  this 
can  be  found,  he  feels  it  infinitely  valuable.  Per- 
haps the  one  poem  of  Wordsworth  that  everybody 
knows  is  "We  are  Seven."  It  makes  no  difference 
that  two  of  them  lie  in  the  churchyard.  As  an- 
other poet  puts  it,  "love  is  love  forevermore."  And 
this  profoundest  lesson  that  man  can  learn  comes 
from  a  little  child.  There  are  very  few  characters 
in  poetic  literature  who  can  hold  as  high  a  place  as 


68  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

the  nameless  lad,  the  companion  of  the  poet's  early 
days,  in  the  short  story  of  whose  life  the  power  of 
Nature  and  the  dignity  of  the  simplest  human  ex- 
perience are  brought  together. 

"There  was  a  Boy;  ye  knew  him  well,  ye  Cliffs 
And  islands  of  Winander.     Many  a  time, 
At  evening,  when  the  earliest  stars  began 
To  move  along  the  edges  of  the  hills, 
Rising  or  setting,  would  he  stand  alone, 
Beneath  the  trees,  or  by  the  glimmering  lake; 
And  there,  with  fingers  interwoven,  both  hands 
Pressed  closely  palm  to  palm,  and  to  his  mouth 
Uplifted,  he,  as  through  an  instrument, 
Blew  mimic  hootings  to  the  silent  owls, 
That  they  might  answer  him.     And  they  would  shout 
Across  the  watery  vale,  and  shout  again, 
Responsive  to  his  call;  with  quivering  peals, 
And  long  halloos,  and  screams,  and  echoes  loud 
Redoubled  and  redoubled ;  concourse  wild 
Of  mirth  and  jocund  din.     And,  when  it  chanced 
That  pauses  of  deep  silence  mocked  his  skill, 
Then,  sometimes,  in  that  silence,  while  he  hung 
Listening,  a  gentle  shock  of  mild  surprise 
Has  carried  far  into  his  heart  the  voice 
Of  mountain  torrents;  or  the  visible  scene 
Would  enter  unawares  into  his  mind 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  69 

With  all  its  solemn  imagery,  its  rocks, 

Its  woods,  and  that  uncertain  heaven,  received 

Into  the  bosom  of  the  steady  lake. 

"This  Boy  was  taken  from  his  Mates,  and  died 

In  childhood,  ere  he  was  full  twelve  years  old. 

Fair  is  the  spot,  most  beautiful  the  Vale 

Where  he  was  born;  the  grassy  Churchyard  hangs 

Upon  a  slope  above  the  village  school; 

And  through  that  Churchyard  when  my  way  has  led 

At  evening,  I  believe  that  oftentimes 

A  long  half-hour  together  have  I  stood 

Mute —  looking  at  the  grave  in  which  he  lies." 

Shakespeare  is  the  great  capitalist  of  poetic 
thought.  Wordsworth  is  provincial,  but  his  province 
is  among  the  fairest  known  to  men.  It  is  at  a  great 
distance  that  Matthew  Arnold  follows  these,  but 
still  he  does  follow.  His  range  of  thought  is  limited, 
his  mastery  of  words  is  not  remarkable.  His 
poetry  was  an  accident,  we  might  almost  say  an 
incident,  in  his  life.  The  cares  of'  this  world  came 
between  him  and  the  Muse.  The  deceitfulness 
of  riches  did  not  much  trouble  him,  but  the  pinch 
of  poverty  was  only  avoided  by  hard  and  most 
prosaic  work.  Most  of  his  poetry  was  written 


70  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

in  his  youth.  For  years  he  turned  away  from  it, 
and  spent  his  intellectual  substance  along  other 
lines.  We  must  make  allowance  for  these  things 
when  we  come  to  estimate  his  poetic  worth.  He 
is  no  epoch-maker,  no  miracle  of  genius.  But  in 
his  own  sphere  he  is  a  poet  of  wonderful  sweetness, 
and  if  he  has  not  much  light  to  cast  upon  the  prob- 
lems that  vex  humanity  he  is  not  content  with  dark- 
ness, but  is  always  seeking,  even  though  he  does 
not  find. 

Matthew  Arnold  the  critic  helps  us  to  an  under- 
standing of  Matthew  Arnold  the  poet.  He  is  not 
exactly  anxious  and  worried  about  many  things,  — 
that  is  not  his  way,  —  but  there  are  many  things 
about  which  he  is  concerned.  He  goes  down  to 
the  sea  in  ships  and  does  business  in  great  waters; 
and  sometimes  he  is  out  of  sight  of  land,  and  those 
who  follow  blindly  must  be  sore  distressed.  But 
back  of  all  that  lightning  play  of  wit,  and  back  of 
those  reforming  schemes  of  his,  half  playful  and 
half  serious,  by  which  Nonconformists  were  to  be 
taught  the  unloveliness  of  their  clamor  for  "the 
dissidence  of  Dissent,  and  the  Protestantism  of  the 
Protestant  religion,"  and  bishops  were  to  be  made 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  71 

more  reasonable,  and  the  awful  flatness  of  Philis- 
tinism was  to  be  seasoned  with  a  little  pinch  of 
Attic  salt,  lies  something  else.  These  may  re- 
ceive the  attention  of  Matthew  Arnold  in  the  world, 
but  his  true  home  is  in 

"that  sweet  city  with  her  dreaming  spires, 
Who  needs  not  June  for  beauty's  heightening." 

With  all  his  special  pleading  and  his  agitation,  he 
does  not  care  about  bringing  men  to  see  things  with 
his  eyes;  or  rather,  if  there  is  spiritual  agreement, 
he  is  content  to  let  intellectual  agreement  go.  Theo- 
logical sympathy  with  Newman  he  had  none  what- 
ever, nor  could  he  have  had  at  any  time.  But  that 
did  not  prevent  him  from  seeing  in  Newman  the 
most  fascinating  figure  of  his  day.  Those  high 
gifts,  that  splendid  hope  which  ended  in  such  bitter 
disappointment,  that  funeral  sermon  preached  by 
the  dead  man  over  the  grave  of  all  that  he  had  been, 
that  hiding  of  light  under  a  bushel  which  is  such 
a  heavy  indictment  against  the  Church  of  Rome, 
that  old  man  who  had  been  a  leader  in  the  early 
days  of  the  century,  and  who  survived,  in  a  sort  of 
double  exile,  almost  to  its  end  —  this  is  a  history 


72  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

which  might  move  any  man.  It  moved  Arnold 
deeply.  If  he  had  a  keen  eye  for  intellectual  weak- 
ness, or  what  he  considered  intellectual  weakness, 
he  had  a  keen  eye  too  for  spiritual  beauty.  He  pre- 
ferred such  beauty,  even  though  it  might  be  in  error, 
to  those  glaring  virtues  which,  rightly  or  wrongly,  he 
attributed  to  the  Puritans  and  their  ecclesiastical 
descendants,  and  which  make  their  possessors  — 
Arnold  would  almost  have  said  their  victims  —  so 
difficult  to  deal  with  at  times.  As  he  felt  about 
Newman,  so  was  it  with  Oxford  also.  She  was  the 
"home  of  lost  causes,  and  forsaken  beliefs,  and  un- 
popular names,  and  impossible  loyalties."  So  be 
it.  But  because  she  was  the  queen  of  romance,  she 
must  be  the  city  of  the  soul. 

Some  one  has  spoken  of  Arnold's  system  as  Angli- 
canism minus  Christianity.  Minus  Christianity  of  a 
certain  sort  it  is  indeed,  but  if  the  letter  is  lacking  the 
spirit  is  present  in  no  small  measure.  He  is  like  that 
man  in  Scripture  who  said  he  would  not  go,  but  did 
go,  nevertheless.  He  declares  his  unbelief,  or  rather 
his  non-belief;  he  insists  upon  his  uncertainty  with 
a  dogmatism  equal  to  that  of  the  Athanasian  Creed 
itself;  he  denies  absolutely  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  as 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  73 

the  Church  has  always  held  it,  —  and  then  he 
substitutes  for  it  a  divinity  in  Christ  which  it  is  even 
harder  to  account  for  or  to  understand.  After  the 
process  described  by  Bishop  Butler,  by  which  any- 
thing can  be  made  anything,  he  is  by  no  means  with- 
out skill  in  making  something  nothing.  He  sees  so 
clearly  that  he  does  not  see  far.  He  possesses,  to  use 
one  of  his  own  expressions,  a  "sad  lucidity  of  soul." 
He  sees  the  weakness  of  human  nature,  and  guesses 
at  its  strength.  He  sees  unloveliness,  —  the  truss 
factory  occupying  the  finest  site  in  England,  the 
College  of  Health,  with  the  beasts  which  are  probably 
lions,  in  the  New  Road,  —  and  he  gives  to  these  an 
attention  to  which  they  really  have  no  claim.  He 
sees  a  theological  system  which  he  could  never  have 
constructed,  and  he  lays  hold  of  the  mistakes  of  its 
adherents  to  pull  it  down.  With  a  lack  of  imagina- 
tion not  to  be  looked  for  in  a  poet,  he  asks  for  proof 
of  God.  He  seems  to  forget  that  the  highest  things 
in  life  do  not  come  to  us  by  proof,  that  faith  is  quite  as 
real  a  power.  But  we  cannot  read  his  poetry  with- 
out feeling  that  he  knows  more  of  God  than  he  is 
willing  to  confess. 
To  a  heart  naturally  Christian  —  he  has  "so 


74  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

much  unlearnt,  so  much  resigned"  —  there  is  added 
a  restless  and  inconclusive  mind.  He  has  always  a 
compass,  pointing  fixedly  to  the  pole-star  of  right- 
eousness, but  there  are  many  times  when  he  seems  to 
be  without  a  destination.  He  visits  the  Carthusian 
Monastery  on  the  Grande  Chartreuse. 

"Waiting  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 
The  other  powerless  to  be  born, 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head, 
Like  these,  on  earth,  I  wait  forlorn. 
Their  faith,  my  tears,  the  world  deride — 
I  come  to  shed  them  at  their  side." 

Then,  after  a  little,  he  goes  on. 

"Achilles  ponders  in  his  tent, 
The  kings  of  modern  thought  are  dumb; 
Silent  they  are,  though  not  content, 
And  wait  to  see  the  future  come. 
They  have  the  grief  men  had  of  yore, 
But  they  contend  and  cry  no  more. 

"Our  fathers  watered  with  their  tears 
This  sea  of  time  whereon  we  sail ; 
Their  voices  were  in  all  men's  ears 
Who  passed  within  their  puissant  hail. 
Still  the  same  ocean  round  us  raves, 
But  we  stand  mute,  and  watch  the  waves." 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  75 

Here  is  hopelessness  indeed,  but  hopeless  is  some- 
thing that  Matthew  Arnold  cannot  be.  He  looks  to 
Wordsworth,  and  "the  freshness  of  the  early  world," 
rather  than  to  Byron,  who  bears  about  "  the  pageant 
of  his  bleeding  heart."  Now  and  again,  he  prepares 
some  situation  of  deep  despondency,  and  then  he 
escapes  from  it  with  a  happy  smile.  He  insists  that 
he  does  not  know,  but  he  has  an  enviable  power  of 
suggesting  glorious  things  which  has  led  to  some  of 
his  noblest  work.  He  is  like  one  of  his  own  sonnets, 
in  which  he  describes  Tertullian's  stern  sentence 
that  there  could  be  no  forgiveness  for  those  who  had 
sinned  after  baptism. 

"He  saves  the  sheep,  the  goats  He  does  not  save." 

The  Church  listened,  and  made  no  denial.    But  then 

"she  smiled;  and  in  the  Catacombs, 
With  eye  suffused,  but  heart  inspired  true, 
On  those  walls  subterranean,  where  she  hid 
Her  head  'mid  ignominy,  death,  and  tombs, 
She  her  Good  Shepherd's  hasty  image  drew  — 
And  on  His  shoulders,  not  a  lamb,  a  kid." 

It  is  very  much  so  with  Matthew  Arnold.  Though  he 
declares  that  his  subject  is  sadness  and  uncertainty, 


76  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

somehow  or  other  it  often  issues  in  joy  and  hope. 
This  is  done  by  subtle  suggestion,  rather  than  by 
direct  assertion.  There  is  nothing  to  relieve  the 
gloom,  but  the  gloom  is  relieved.  There  is  no  word 
of  God,  but  a  mysterious  spirit  broods  over  the  earth, 
and  brings  peace.  The  poet  has  been  picturing  the 
wreck  of  things.  Then  he  looks  away  — 

"And  glorious  there  without  a  sound, 
Across  the  glimmering  lake, 
High  in  the  Valais-depth  profound, 
I  saw  the  morning  break." 

It  is  but  a  touch.  It  has  no  connection  with  anything 
that  has  gone  before.  But  it  carries  with  it  a  hope 
that  no  argument  could  demolish,  before  which 
despondency  must  fade  away. 

But  there  is  something  more  than  this  hopeful 
hopelessness,  this  glad  melancholy.  If  there  is  much 
that  we  cannot  know,  if  "the  night  wind  brings  up 
the  stream"  only  "murmurs  and  scents  of  the 
infinite  sea,"  there  is  something  that  we  can  know, 
and  that  we  must  know,  if  we  are  to  learn  to  know 
ourselves.  We  have  the  power,  even  though  it  be 
with  many  hindrances,  to  help  and  to  give  light  to 
one  another.  This  is  the  thought  of  the  beautiful 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  77 

little  poem  on  "  Dover  Beach,"  —  the  brooding 
mystery  of  life,  the  removal  of  those  things  that  can 
be  shaken  as  of  things  that  are  made,  but  with  it  all 
the  strength  and  glory  of  human  companionship  and 
love.  Perhaps  Arnold's  uncertainty  is  never  more 
certain  of  the  worst,  his  melancholy  never  more  fully 
developed,  than  in  this  poem.  But  though  Faith  is 
disappearing,  Love  remains.  Again  and  again,  he 
returns  to  this  refuge.  Where  Love  is  present,  it 
answers  those  questions  which  otherwise  might  be 
forever  asked  in  vain. 

"Then  he  thinks  he  knows 
The  hills  where  his  life  rose, 
And  the  sea  where  it  goes." 

The  noble  lines  in  memory  of  his  father,  Thomas 
Arnold,  written  at  Rugby  Chapel,  with  which  that 
father  must  always  be  so  closely  associated,  are  little 
more  than  a  variation  and  an  elaboration  of  the  same 
theme.  Man  is  in  need  of  help.  His  stronger  brother 
brings  him  the  help  he  needs.  This  power  of  rescue 
helps  us  to  realize  the  dignity  of  man.  It  helps  us 
to  realize  that  faith  of  which  the  present  holds  such 
slender  store.  So,  like  his  own  Scholar  Gipsy, 
Arnold  goes  his  way  — 


78  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade." 

When  now  we  pass  from  Matthew  Arnold  on  to 
Tennyson,  we  find  that  Faith  and  Love  are  still  the 
chief  subjects  of  our  poet's  thought.  But  Faith  is  no 
longer  in  eclipse.  There  are  those,  indeed,  who  have 
not  hesitated  to  speak  of  Tennyson  as  an  agnostic. 
It  is  true  that  he  has  not  done  the  Apostles'  Creed 
into  verse.  He  is  not  one  of  those  dangerous  and 
intolerable  persons  who  choose  to  regard  themselves 
as  depositaries  of  the  sum  of  human  knowledge. 
With  him,  as  with  St.  Paul,  there  are  limits  to  what 
he  knows;  though,  like  St.  Paul  again,  he  hopes  to 
know  more  by-and-by.  But,  since  he  is  not  a  teacher 
of  dogmatic  theology  but  a  poet,  he  knows  all  that 
there  is  need  for  him  to  know. 

The  worth  of  Love  —  how  Tennyson  dwells  upon 
it,  and  lets  it  blaze  forth  from  one  brilliant  setting 
after  another.  It  is  native  to  the  golden  clime  in 
which  the  poet  was  born.  It  transforms  the  Princess 
from  a  fascinating  anomaly  into  a  creature  of  flesh 
and  blood.  The  cunning  brain  is  become  a  living 
soul.  It  lifts  Maud's  crack-brained  lover  out  of 
himself,  and  turns  his  morbid  reveries  and  dreary 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  79 

speculations  into  exquisite  melody.  It  stands  out 
through  the  pessimism  and  despair  of  "Locksley 
Hall."  In  "The  Two  Voices"  it  was  the  sight  of 
father  and  mother,  secure  in  their  double  love,  and 
in  the  love  of  the  little  maiden  by  their  side,  that  put 
gloom  and  hopelessness  to  flight;  that  made  the 
creeping  minutes  become  the  bounteous  hours, 
and  satisfied  the  soul  that,  though  the  old  problems 
and  the  old  confusion  might  remain,  God's  ever- 
lasting arms  were  underneath. 

This  is  Love  at  holiday.  But  in  the  storms  of  life, 
when  fierce  winds  sweep  down  across  bleak  ice- 
fields, it  has  an  equally  important  part  to  play.  It  is 
sometimes  said  that  Tennyson  lacks  dramatic  power, 
and  no  doubt  his  plays,  with  all  their  cunning 
workmanship  and  skilful  elaboration,  give  color  to 
the  assertion.  They  compel  our  admiration  of  the 
author,  but  the  characters  themselves  do  not  very 
greatly  move  us.  But  if  he  cannot,  like  Shakespeare, 
create  men  and  women  of  real  flesh  and  blood  and 
make  them  live  their  lives  before  us,  he  can  lay  hold 
of  critical  moments,  and  paint  them  with  a  brilliancy 
which  almost  blinds  our  eyes  with  light.  The  short 
poem  "Rizpah"  is  but  one  example  out  of  many. 


8o  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

It  is  the  word  of  an  old  woman,  whose  son  has  been 
hanged  in  chains,  to  a  charitably-disposed  visitor 
who  has  come  to  administer  comfort  and  what  she 
seems  to  regard  as  orthodox  instruction  of  a  suitable 
and  timely  sort.  There  is  not  one  word  of  direct  de- 
scription in  the  poem.  From  beginning  to  end  it  is 
the  monologue  of  a  crushed  and  broken  soul,  to  whom 
love,  and  hopeless  love,  is  the  one  thing  left  in  all  the 
world.  It  is  not  the  love  which  may  receive  as  well  as 
give.  It  is  not  love  which  can  look  forward,  it  is 
hardly  love  which  can  look  back.  It  is  not  based  on 
worth,  and  happiness  of  any  sort  bears  no  relation  to 
it.  But  it  glorifies  the  grim  surroundings,  and  blots 
out  the  shame.  Love  claims  boldly,  where  even 
Faith  hesitates. 

"Heard,  have  you?    What?    They  have  told  you  he  never 

repented  his  sin? 

How  do  they  know  it?    Are  they  his  mother?    Are  you  of 
his  kin? 

"Heard.    Have  you  ever  heard  when  the  storm  on  the  downs 

began, 

The  wind  that  'ill  wail  like  a  child,  and  the  sea  that  'ill  moan 
like  a  man? 

"Election,  Election,  and  Reprobation —  it's  all  very  well. 
But  I  go  to-night  to  my  boy,  and  I  shall  not  find  him  in  Hell." 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS           81 

And  the  love  that  must  have  seemed  to  men  so  un- 
availing passed  to  other  regions  where  man's  judg- 
ment counts  for  even  less  than  it  does  here. 

But  after  all  it  is  not  in  poems  like  this  that 
Tennyson  shows  us  the  exceeding  worth  of  love. 
Here  we  have  love  spending  itself,  as  it  were,  upon 
its  object.  But  in  other  ways  he  shows  us  how  it  lifts 
men  out  of  themselves,  and  gives  them  a  broader  out- 
look and  a  larger  life.  The  opposite  of  love  is  selfish- 
ness, and  in  the  "Palace  of  Art"  we  have  a  picture  of 
selfishness  raised  to  its  highest  terms,  and  tricked  out 
in  all  its  most  entrancing  garments.  It  is  the  world  at 
its  very  best,  with  love  eliminated.  Never  were  more 
favorable  conditions,  never  was  selfishness  equipped 
with  more  magnificence.  Cameo  follows  cameo,  as 
the  poet  unfolds  those  things  which  make  the  palace's 
beauty.  There  are  cool  green  courts  and  cloisters 
and  galleries  and  fountains  and  statues  and  deep-set 
windows  and  corridors  and  rooms  great  and  small, 

"each  a  perfect  whole 
From  living  Nature,  fit  for  every  mood 
And  change  of  my  still  soul." 

There  are  landscapes  and  legends,  and  paintings  of 
the  wise  men  of  old.  There  are  even  angels  bearing 


8a  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

gifts  —  beautiful  angels,  to  delight  the  eye.  In  choice 
mosaic,  cycles  of  human  history  are  worked  out. 
And  there  the  soul,  intent  upon  herself  and  careless 
of  all  else,  held  her  high  court.  Her  separation  was 
her  glory.  She  needed  nothing.  Was  she  not  com- 
plete ?  She  gazed  with  contempt  and  loathing  upon 
those  who  were  less  fortunate  or  learned  than  herself. 
They  were  but  "darkening  droves  of  swine."  This 
is  her  attitude,  —  a  looker-on  at  life,  a  patron,  but  a 
patron  for  no  other  purpose  than  the  augmentation 
of  her  own  dignity  and  grandeur,  a  superior  being 
not  to  be  annoyed  nor  disturbed  by  the  common  cares 
of  men.  But  she  could  not  hold  it.  She  lacked  the 
one  thing  that  makes  the  difference  between  death 
and  life.  It  is  only  dead  men  who  can  be,  in  any 
real  sense,  exclusive.  In  spite  of  herself,  she  was 
forced  to  look  beyond  herself.  No  less  skilfully  than 
when  he  reared  for  her  the  walls  of  the  palace,  the 
poet  describes  her  fall.  In  all  God's  universe,  so 
strongly  knit  together,  that  soul  stands  alone. 

"A  spot  of  dull  stagnation,  without  light 

Or  power  of  movement,  seemed  my  soul, 
'Mid  onward-sloping  motions  infinite 
Making  for  one  sure  goal. 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  83 

"A  still  salt  pool,  locked  in  with  bars  of  sand, 

Left  on  the  shore;  that  hears  all  night 
The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the  land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white. 

"Back  on  herself  her  serpent  pride  had  curled. 

'No  voice,'  she  shrieked  in  that  lone  hall, 
'No  voice  breaks  through  the  stillness  of  this  world; 
One  deep,  deep  silence  all.' 

"She,  mouldering  with  the  dull  earth's  mouldering  sod, 

Inwrapt  tenfold  in  slothful  shame, 
Lay  there  exiled  from  eternal  God, 
Lost  to  her  place  and  name; 

"And  death  and  life  she  hated  equally, 

And  nothing  saw,  for  her  despair, 
But  dreadful  time,  dreadful  eternity, 
No  comfort  anywhere. 

"She  howled  aloud,  'I  am  on  fire  within.' 

There  comes  no  murmur  of  reply. 
'What  is  it  that  will  take  away  my  sin, 
And  save  me  lest  I  die?'  " 

To  a  question  like  this,  and  from  a  poet  like 
Tennyson,  there  could  be  but  one  answer,  just  as 
there  could  be  but  one  answer  from  the  Gospel.  It 
is  he  who  is  willing  to  lose  his  life  who  saves  it,  it  is 


84  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

he  who  seeks  that  finds,  it  is  not  when  he  is  alone 
but  when  he  sees  himself  reflected  in  a  brother's 
eye  that  a  man  may  come  to  know  himself  for  what 
he  is.  There  is  no  sin  in  the  beauty  of  the  palace. 
Let  that  remain.  The  sin  lies  in  the  proud  and 
self-sufficient  soul. 

"So  when  four  years  were  wholly  finished 

She  threw  her  royal  robes  away. 
'Make  me  a  cottage  in  the  vale,'  she  said, 

'Where  I  may  mourn  and  pray. 

" '  Yet  pull  not  down  my  palace  towers,  that  are 

So  lightly,  beautifully  built; 
Perchance  I  may  return  with  others  there 
When  I  have  purged  my  guilt.'" 

"With  others"  —  this  marks  the  difference  between 
happiness  and  despair,  between  love  and  selfishness, 
between  human  righteousness  and  sin.  The  apostle 
struck  one  of  the  deepest  notes  of  God's  way  of  deal- 
ing with  the  world,  when,  at  the  end  of  his  history 
of  faith,  he  adds  that  "they,  without  us,  should  not 
be  made  perfect."  That  no  man  lives  to  himself  nor 
dies  to  himself  is  more  than  a  truth  of  ethics.  It  is 
a  fact  of  life. 
We  have  seen  that  life  without  love,  with  self  as  its 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  85 

sole  object,  is  but  the  delirium  of  madness.  Where 
love  fails  and  falters,  life  fails  and  falters  too,  as  in 
the  departure  of  Guinevere  from  King  Arthur's  court. 
But  where  love  is  strong  and  deep  and  true  it  fills  life 
with  glory  and  with  a  joy  against  which  even  death  is 
powerless. 

"'T  is  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all." 

More  than  any  other  poet,  we  must  associate  Tenny- 
son with  the  eulogy  of  such  a  love.  In  1833  Arthur 
Henry  Hallam  died  at  Vienna,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two.  He  was  buried  in  the  little  church  which 
Tennyson  describes,  at  the  meeting  of  the  Severn  and 
the  Wye.  A  tablet  marks  his  resting-place,  and  in 
tender  Latin  records  the  grief  of  those  he  left  behind. 

"Vale  Dulcissime;  Vale  Delectissime  Desideratissime." 

Hallam  was  Tennyson's  friend.  Men  have  ques- 
tioned sometimes  whether  he  was  worthy  of  the 
monument  of  verse  which  the  poet  has  raised  to  him 
in  "In  Memoriam."  But  it  is  a  foolish  question  and 
an  unnecessary  one,  even  an  unworthy  one.  Perish 
the  thought  that  those  who  love  us  should  estimate 
our  merits  too  carefully  in  accordance  with  our  just 


86  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

deserts.  It  would  fare  ill  with  the  best  and  brightest 
if  there  were  not  some  to  exaggerate  their  abilities  and 
their  virtues,  and  to  pass  by  their  deficiencies  with 
unseeing  eyes.  When  Tennyson  writes  of  "his 
friend,  the  brother  of  his  love,"  no  doubt  he  sees  there 
what  must  have  been  hidden  from  the  world.  What 
the  world  might  have  seen  in  later  years  is  an  aca- 
demic question  which  cannot  possibly  be  answered. 
Meanwhile,  we  have  a  strong  and  tender  soul  telling 
us  of  his  love  and  of  his  loss.  If  it  is  on  the  note  of 
grief  that  the  poem  begins,  other  and  sweeter  notes 
soon  enter  in.  Time  has  not  conquered  love,  but  it 
has  brought  a  change.  The  earth  is  no  longer  hung  in 
black,  for  it  is  love  rather  than  grief  that  shows  en- 
durance. That  cannot  darken  life,  with  whatever 
weight  of  grief  it  may  be  mixed.  Rather,  it  makes 
life,  and  lightens  its  burdens,  and  smooths  away  its 
cares.  It  brings  new  treasures  to  heart  and  mind  and 
soul.  It  explains,  and  brightens,  and  ennobles.  It  is 
immortal  and  eternal. 

"Love  is  and  was  my  Lord  and  King, 
And  in  his  presence  I  attend 
To  hear  the  tidings  of  my  friend 
Which  every  hour  his  couriers  bring. 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  87 

"Love  is  and  was  my  King  and  Lord, 
And  will  be,  though  as  yet  I  keep 
Within  his  court  on  earth,  and  sleep 
Encompassed  by  his  faithful  guard, 

"And  hear  at  times  a  sentinel 

Who  moves  about  from  place  to  place, 
And  whispers  to  the  worlds  of  space, 
In  the  deep  night,  that  all  is  well." 

This  is  the  worth  of  love,  the  love  of  our  own  kind, 
for  the  love  of  God  is  not  the  poet's  subject.  But  love 
of  wife,  and  child,  and  friend,  needs  something  more 
to  give  it  firmness  and  security.  The  changes  and 
chances  of  this  mortal  life  might  overcome  it  if  it 
stood  quite  alone.  And  so  to  the  strength  and  force 
of  love  which  the  poet  delights  to  set  forth,  he  adds 
the  worth  of  faith.  Earth  must  point  to  heaven  or 
else  to  the  absence  of  heaven,  which  is  hell.  One 
cannot  deal  with  man,  and  not  sooner  or  later  come 
to  God.  And  when  one  deals  with  man  on  his 
highest  side,  as  Tennyson  does,  God  must  be  near. 

Sermons  on  faith  are  apt  to  be  uninteresting. 
Perhaps  they  approach  it  too  generally  from  its 
philosophical  side.  They  do  not  realize  its  excessive 
naturalness,  its  extreme  simplicity.  They  are  in- 


88  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

dined  to  urge  as  a  duty  what  is,  to  a  very  great 
extent,  inevitable.  Now  and  then,  it  almost  seems 
as  if  there  were  men  who  were  trying  to  apologize  for 
it.  But  faith  does  not  need  apology.  Without  it, 
life  is  materialism,  a  brutal  mixture  of  gold,  and 
brass,  and  iron,  and  strong  flint.  To  Tennyson, 
faith  is  the  invincible  assurance  that  there  is  One 
who  sees  our  needs,  whose  ears  are  open  to  our 
prayers.  If  love  has  seemed  to  fail  us,  faith  comes 
to  the  rescue.  It  is  not  a  thick-skinned  and  weak- 
minded  optimism,  which  denies  the  reality  of  the 
evil  that  is  in  the  world.  It  does  not  dismiss  things 
that  are  hard  to  be  understood  as  unworthy  of  any 
consideration.  But  always,  amidst  whatever  per- 
plexities and  whatever  troubles,  it  can  discern  upon 

"the  low,  dark  verge  of  life, 
The  twilight  of  eternal  day." 

It  is  a  faculty  of  the  soul  rather  than  of  the  mind,  to 
be  felt,  and  not  to  be  denned  with  over-zealous  care. 
It  is  very  far  removed  from  dogmatism.  But  such 
as  it  is,  it  is  no  less  real  and  indispensable  than  love 
itself.  The  poet  has  lost  his  friend,  but  he  will  not 
be  the  fool  of  loss.  Death  has  had  power  to  change 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  89 

the  current  of  his  life.  He  recognizes  that,  of  course. 
But  to  the  one  whom  it  has  taken,  he  cannot  but 
believe  that  death  has  brought  its  gains.  The  much- 
beloved  is  becoming  "a  lord  of  large  experience," 
that  by-and-by  he  may  teach  those  whom  he  has 
preceded.  The  loss  may  be  described  and  measured, 
but  the  gain  is  not  done  away  with  because  it  cannot 
be  set  down  in  terms  of  human  speech.  Faith  leads 
men  from  grief  and  despondency  to  hope  and  cheer. 
It  is  indestructible  and  inextinguishable.  No  argu- 
ment can  prevail  against  it,  no  contradiction  prove 
it  groundless. 

Before  three  generations  Tennyson  set  forth  these 
truths.  In  one  poem  after  another  we  find  the  same 
love  of  love,  the  same  trust  in  faith,  the  same  con- 
sciousness of  God's  besetting  presence  in  the  world, 
which  make  the  very  bone  and  sinew  of  his  work. 
He  has  no  formal  creed  to  present,  but  he  deals  with 
that  in  man  which  make  creeds  possible.  And  at  the 
last  there  is  no  weariness,  no  mournful  reverie.  For 
the  old  man,  close  to  his  journey's  end,  there  are 
still  "  so  many  worlds,  so  much  to  do."  He  is  not  old. 
He  is  young  again,  and  the  future  stretches  away 
before  him,  sealed  by  faith  and  love. 


90  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"When  the  dumb  Hour,  clothed  in  black, 
Brings  the  Dreams  about  my  bed, 
Call  me  not  so  often  back, 
Silent  Voices  of  the  dead, 
Toward  the  lowland  ways  behind  me, 
And  the  sunlight  that  is  gone. 
Call  me  rather,  silent  voices, 
Forward  to  the  starry  track 
Glimmering  up  the  heights  beyond  me, 
On,  and  always  on." 

These  are  the  men  with  whom  Robert  Browning 
must  naturally  be  compared.  There  are  ways  in 
which  he  excels  them  all;  there  are  other  ways,  no 
doubt,  in  which  they  all  surpass  him.  There  is  no 
poet  about  whom  so  many  contradictory  things  can 
be  said,  and  said  with  truth.  One  of  the  cleverest 
of  the  many  clever  people  who  have  written  about 
him  illustrates  his  many-sided  conception  of  the 
universe  by  the  old  story  of  five  blind  men  who  found 
themselves  within  reach  of  an  elephant.  One  of 
them  put  his  arms  about  its  leg,  and  declared  at  once 
that  an  elephant  was  just  a  kind  of  tree.  Another 
seized  its  wriggling,  waving  trunk,  and  fled  in  terror 
from  what  he  supposed  must  be  a  serpent.  Another, 
taller  perhaps,  or  coming  from  a  different  quarter, 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  91 

leaned  against  its  side,  and  was  satisfied  that  an  ele- 
phant was  like  a  wall.  The  man  who  approached  it 
from  the  rear,  and  made  its  acquaintance  by  getting 
hold  of  its  tail,  insisted  that  it  was  a  rope;  and  the 
man  who  ran  into  its  tusk  was  certain  that  it  was  a 
sharp  and  heavy  spear.  All  of  these  men  had  ex- 
cellent reasons  for  the  conclusions  at  which  they  had 
arrived.  At  the  same  time,  those  who  are  familiar 
with  elephants  must  feel  that  such  descriptions,  how- 
ever true  so  far  as  they  go,  still  leave  a  great  deal  to 
be  supplied.  In  this  strange  world  of  ours  it  is  not 
often  that  the  utterance  of  a  single  undisputed  and 
indisputable  truth  is  all  that  is  needed  upon  any 
subject.  The  smallest  things  are  far  too  big  for  any 
such  short  and  easy  method,  the  simplest  things  are 
far  too  complicated.  And  an  elephant  is  neither 
small  nor  simple. 

The  same  old  fable  applies  most  admirably  to 
Browning  himself  and  the  things  that  men  have  said 
of  him,  —  men  who  have  grasped  the  obvious  and 
are  content  to  go  no  farther.  Here  comes  one,  —  a 
blind  man,  surely,  but  yet  a  blind  man  whose  hand 
has  touch  of  truth  —  and  tells  us  that  the  poet  is 
tedious.  If  he  points  in  proof  to  some  of  the  dramas, 


92  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

or  to  a  poem  like  "Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau," 
with  all  its  subtle  insight  into  queer  human  nature, 
the  most  enthusiastic  disciple  can  at  least  see  what  he 
means.  Another  thinks  that  Browning  is  fantastic 
and  grotesque.  Where  he  attracts,  where  he  finds 
spiritual  kinship  —  and  the  relations  of  a  genius  may 
be  very  ordinary  people,  after  all  —  he  binds  his 
kindred  to  him  heart  and  soul,  deep  calling  unto 
deep.  But  where  he  offends,  he  offends  mightily. 
There  are  excellent  people  who  take  too  seriously  his 
pleasantries  about  Hobbs  and  Nobbs,  and  Nokes  and 
Stokes,  who  insist  on  treating  his  asides  as  if  they  were 
the  staple  of  his  conversation.  It  is  irreverent,  of 
course,  to  laugh  in  church,  but  there  are  times  when 
laughter  is  not  only  innocent,  but  praiseworthy.  Nor 
is  it  a  monopoly  of  those  who  do  nothing  else.  Then 
it  becomes  imbecile.  Browning  can  be  grotesque,  or 
he  never  could  have  written  "  Pacchiarotto ; "  and 
sometimes  grotesqueness  jostles  elbows  unpleasantly 
with  the  sublime.  But  we  must  remember  that  the 
tail  which  the  blind  man  took  for  the  whole  elephant, 
though  it  was  a  real  tail,  yet  gave  a  most  misleading 
and  incomplete  impression.  The  elephant  was  tail, 
and  something  more. 


BROWNING  AMONG  THE  POETS  93 

Another  literary  offence  with  which  Browning  is 
often  charged  is  pedantry.  It  is  true,  he  knows  more 
words  than  the  dictionary,  and  more  facts  than  the 
encyclopaedia,  but  he  uses  these  words  and  facts  as 
if  the  whole  world  knew  them  as  well  as  he.  It  is  a 
temptation  of  the  ignorant  to  mistake  knowledge  for 
assumption,  to  make  no  distinction  between  the  pos- 
session of  a  thing  and  the  vulgar  desire  to  show  it 
off.  But  while  Browning's  range  of  knowledge  is  tre- 
mendous, he  never  seems  conscious  of  superiority. 
It  does  not  seem  to  occur  to  him  that  everyone  does 
not  know  just  what  is  Saponian  strength,  or  just  who 
was  George  Bubb  Dodington.  He  takes  a  great 
deal  for  granted,  both  in  his  readers,  and  in  his  poems 
themselves.  Again  and  again  he  flings  us  into  the 
thick  of  things,  without  a  word  to  help  us  to  discover 
where  we  are.  He  tells  us  plainly  that  his  poems 
were  never  meant  to  take  the  place  of  a  cigar  or  an 
after-dinner  nap.  If  any  man  will  read  them,  he 
must  work  for  them.  But  this  is  not  pedantry,  any 
more  than  trigonometry  is  pedantry.  A  charge  that 
carries  much  more  weight  is  that  of  obscurity.  That 
there  are  times  when  Browning  is  obscure  cannot  be 
denied.  We  are  told  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  wrote  that 


94  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

she  had  read  "Sordello"  with  much  interest,  and 
wanted  to  know  whether  Sordello  was  a  man,  or  a 
city,  or  a  book.  He  piles  his  facts  up,  Pelion  upon 
Ossa,  and  then  he  sets  strange  words  playing  hide- 
and-seek  with  one  another.  If  he  were  writing 
sermons  for  a  congregation  which,  once  inside  the 
church-door,  could  not  escape,  or  if  he  were  teaching 
children  too  small  to  consult  the  unabridged  diction- 
ary, this  obscurity  might  be  a  serious  matter.  But 
in  a  poet  with  a  message  for  those  who  have  ears  to 
hear,  but  not  with  the  burden  laid  upon  him  of  pro- 
viding ears  for  those  who  have  them  not,  this  is  not 
the  sin  which  is  without  forgiveness.  It  ought  not 
to  be  hard  to  say  nothing  luminously.  If  a  man  has 
so  much  to  say  that  thought  and  language  cannot 
always  keep  step  together,  we  ought  not  to  com- 
plain that  his  mind  is  so  fertile  that  a  few  tares  are 
mingled  with  the  wheat.  Whoever  takes  pains  with 
Browning  will  find  that  his  pains  will  bring  him  an 
exceeding  great  reward.  It  is  easy  to  point  out  flaws 
in  his  workmanship.  But  whoever  is  moved  by  "  the 
mighty  hopes  that  make  us  men,"  whoever  is  stirred 
by  the  thousand  questions  that  give  to  life  its  inter- 
est, must  praise  his  work. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ISAIAH  AND   BROWNING 

POETRY  and  Prophecy  have  not  the  same 
birthplace  nor  the  same  history,  but  in  the 
hands  of  the  masters  there  comes  a  time  when 
they  are  bound  to  meet.  It  may  be  said  of 
Isaiah,  without  much  fear  of  contradiction,  that  he 
was  the  greatest  prophet  which  the  Hebrew  race 
produced.  Browning's  position,  of  course,  is  a 
much  less  undisputed  one,  but,  whatever  might  be 
urged  against  him,  there  are  none  who  would  ven- 
ture to  deny  his  intellectual  power.  Without  enter- 
ing into  that  dangerous  region  where  comparatives 
are  made  to  issue  in  superlatives,  it  may  not  be  too 
much  to  say  that  he  had  a  keener  mind,  a  more 
subtle  discernment  of  that  which  is  in  man,  than 
any  English-speaking  poet  since  Shakespeare. 

Between  prophet  and  poet  there  lies  an  interval  of 
twenty-five  hundred  years.  One  was  a  Hebrew  of 
the  Hebrews,  a  dweller  in  Jerusalem  through  a  long 


96  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

life,  a  student  of  contemporary  politics,  intensely 
interested  in  the  events  of  his  own  day,  a  man  with 
understanding  of  the  times,  who  passed  his  days  in 
the  service  of  his  generation.  Any  attempt  to  make 
Isaiah  modern  could  only  end  in  dismal  failure. 
The  other  was  an  Englishman,  but  an  Englishman 
who  liked  his  England  at  a  distance,  and  who  turned 
away  from  it  to  do  his  work;  a  man  whose  spirit 
was  always  of  the  nineteenth  century,  at  whatever 
period  the  scenes  of  his  poems  might  be  laid.  The 
very  fact  that  the  contrast  between  them  is  so  glaring 
makes  their  resemblances  the  more  remarkable.  We 
may  confine  ourselves  at  present  to  a  temperamental 
likeness  between  poet  and  prophet,  a  similarity  of 
method  rather  than  of  thought. 

The  word  "strenuous"  has  many  modern  associa- 
tions, but  the  thing  which  it  describes  is  not  a  modern 
thing,  and  we  may  say  of  Isaiah  that  he  was  dis- 
tinctly a  prophet  of  the  strenuous  life.  He  is  "very 
bold"  and  vigorous  in  what  he  has  to  say.  He  has 
no  patience  with  Ahaz'  weakness.  He  will  not  listen 
to  the  plans  of  his  countrymen  for  escaping  from  one 
foe  by  calling  another  to  their  aid.  Let  them  fight 
their  own  battles.  They  will  find  God's  help  enough. 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  97 

When  he  rebukes,  he  uses  words  which  could  not 
possibly  be  misunderstood.  The  drunkards  of 
Ephraim,  the  ladies  of  the  smart  set  who  wore  their 
finery  at  Ahaz'  court,  must  have  been  dull  indeed  if 
they  were  ignorant  of  what  the  prophet  thought  of 
them.  But  when  he  paints  those  glowing  pictures 
of  a  redeemed  city,  his  language  is  hardly  less  in- 
tense. His  faith  is  of  the  kind  that  removes  moun- 
tains. It  overleaps  all  barriers,  it  knows  no  obstacles. 
The  earth  shall  be  full  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea. 

This  same  intensity  we  find  in  Browning.  Though 
he  is  a  poet,  he  builds  no  castles  in  the  air.  The  pos- 
sible has  for  him  a  sacredness  which  the  impossible, 
however  brilliant  or  desirable,  could  never  have.  It 
is  this  upon  which  Bishop  Blougram  insists  with  so 
much  clever  subtleness. 

"The  common  problem,  yours,  mine,  every  one's, 
Is  not  to  fancy  what  were  fair  in  life 
Provided  it  could  be,  —  but,  finding  first 
What  may  be,  then  find  how  to  make  it  fair 
Up  to  our  means;  a  very  different  thing." 

But  the  limits  of  the  possible  must  not  be  too  easily 
marked  out,  as  Blougram  himself,  for  all  his  worldly 

7 


98  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

wisdom  and  his  easy  accommodation  to  conditions, 
hastens  to  set  forth.  Something  must  be  conceded 
to  circumstances,  but  circumstances  cannot  be  al- 
lowed to  make  the  man. 

"No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 
A  man's  worth  something.     God  stoops  o'er  his  head, 
Satan  looks  up  between  his  feet, —  both  tug; 
He's  left,  himself,  i'  the  middle;  the  soul  wakes 
And  grows.     Prolong  that  battle  through  his  life. 
Never  leave  growing  till  the  life  to  come." 

This  is  the  poet's  contention  in  a  hundred  ways. 
The  poet  Eglamor  dies  of  the  trifling  perfection  of 
his  work.  It  was  just  because  he  took  things  so 
easily  that  Sordello  failed.  He  would  not  do  evil, 
but  he  did  not  like  to  take  the  trouble  to  do  good. 
He  had  a  "strange  disbelief  that  aught  was  ever  to 
be  done."  For  him  to  be  what  he  might  have  been 
seemed  a  step  "too  mean  to  take,"  and  so  he  never 
took  it. 

"T  was  a  fit 
He  wished  should  go  to  him,  not  he  to  it." 

He  wanted  to  seem,  rather  than  to  be.  He  was 
content  to  doze  at  home,  if  only  men  thought  that 
he  was  singing  or  fighting  somewhere  else. 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  99 

"A  sorry  farce 
Such  life  is,  after  all." 

This  is  the  poet's  conclusion.  For  with  him  life  is 
for  action,  not  for  criticism.  This  is  the  cry  that 
goes  up  from  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  the  men  and 
women  who  figure  in  his  pages.  If  life  is  thought  of 
as  a  game,  it  is  a  game  to  be  played  hard,  to  be 
thoroughly  enjoyed. 

"How  sad  and  bad  and  mad  it  was, 
But  then,  how  it  was  sweet !  " 

If  it  is  a  voyage,  it  must  be  undertaken  at  whatever 
risk  or  inconvenience.  If  it  is  a  cup,  it  must  be  filled 
and  drained.  If  it  is  a  battle,  it  must  be  fought  to 
the  end,  however  hot  the  sun,  and  thick  the  smoke, 
and  close  the  bullets.  And  so  we  find  his  poems 
filled  with  characters  who  feel,  and  feel  intensely, 
and  do  what  they  do  with  all  the  vigor  of  which  a 
man  is  capable.  The  monk  in  the  Spanish  cloister 
hates  his  fellow,  and  he  puts  into  that  hatred  a  force 
which,  if  it  could  have  been  caught  and  tamed, 
might  have  made  him  a  Saint  Paul. 

"  Gr-r-r- !  there  go,  my  heart's  abhorrence ! 
Water  your  damned  flower-pots,  do ! 


ioo  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

If  hate  killed  men,  Brother  Laurence, 
God's  blood,  would  not  mine  kill  you !" 

Johannes  Agricola  meditates  upon  God.  There  is 
something  sublime  in  the  assurance  with  which  he 
takes  possession  of  the  Divine  decrees,  and  puts 
himself  at  the  very  centre  of  the  universe.  The  rest 
of  the  world  he  dismisses  with  an  indifferent  sentence. 
They  are  as  may  be,  many  of  them 

'in  hell's  fierce  bed, 
Swarming  in  ghastly  wretchedness." 

It  is  nothing  to  him.  That  is  God's  work.  For 
him  — 

"I  lie  where  I  have  always  lain, 

God  smiles  as  He  has  always  smiled; 

Ere  suns  and  moons  could  wax  and  wane, 
Ere  stars  were  thundergirt,  or  piled 

The  heavens,  God  thought  on  me,  His  child." 

And  so  he  is  assured  he  cannot  sin.  He  is  to  be 
guiltless  forever,  through  the  Divine  predestination, 
"full-fed  by  unexhausted  power  to  bless." 

When  Browning  treats  of  love,  there  is  the  same 
abandonment,  the  same  fulness  of  life. 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  101 

"Be  a  god,  and  hold  me 

With  a  charm ! 
Be  a  man,  and  fold  me 
With  thine  arm ! 

"Teach  me,  only  teach,  Love! 

As  I  ought 

I  will  speak  thy  speech,  Love, 
Think  thy  thought." 

Love  colors  all  the  world.  Where  it  is  present,  what 
does  it  matter  if  the  skies  are  gray?  But  where  it  is 
absent,  what  can  it  profit  though  the  skies  be  blue? 
Love  is  more  than  the  victories  and  triumphs  of  the 
centuries.  There  are  those  lines  that  breathe  the 
very  breath  of  the  Campagna,  and  that  picture  so 
vividly  its  ancient  glory  and  its  modern  decay.  This 
is  the  poem's  conclusion,  —  the  poem's,  and  the 
poet's. 

"In  one  year  they  sent  a  million  fighters  forth 

South  and  North, 
And  they  built  their  gods  a  brazen  pillar  high 

As  the  sky; 
Yet  reserved  a  thousand  chariots  in  full  force — 

Gold,  of  course. 
Oh  heart !   oh  blood  that  freezes,  blood  that  burns  1 

Earth's  returns 


102  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

For  whole  centuries  of  folly,  noise,  and  sin  1 

Shut  them  in, 
With  their  triumphs  and  their  glories  and  the  rest ! 

Love  is  best." 

We  pass  on  from  intensity  of  feeling  to  breadth  of 
view,  to  wideness  of  horizon.  Isaiah  lived  in  Jeru- 
salem, but  from  Jerusalem  he  looked  out  over  all 
the  world.  That  was  his  business  as  a  prophet.  He 
was  set  upon  a  watch-tower,  that  he  might  declare 
what  he  saw.  And  he  saw  much.  He  was  never  of 
that  melancholy  company  whose  eyes  reach  only  as 
far  as  the  trough  where  they  feed  and  the  stable 
where  they  lie.  He  saw  good,  and  he  saw  evil.  In 
time  of  peace  he  could  see  the  danger  that  threat- 
ened, though  it  was  yet  a  long  way  off.  In  time  of 
war  he  could  look  beyond  the  fighting  and  the  fear. 
Nor  was  Jerusalem  alone  the  object  of  his  thought. 
There  is  a  considerable  portion  of  his  book  in  which 
the  scene  is  forever  shifting,  in  which  we  need  to  be 
always  accustoming  ourselves  to  some  new  point  of 
view.  At  one  moment  he  is  speaking  of  some  great 
world-power,  the  next  of  some  wandering  tribe 
whose  very  name  we  hear  for  the  first  time.  Although 
his  interests  are  centred  at  Jerusalem,  his  long  sue- 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  103 

cession  of  oracles  concerning  foreign  nations  proves 
conclusively  that  they  do  not  end  there.  In  one 
reign  after  another,  his  place  seems  to  have  been  very 
near  the  king.  But  he  was  familiar  with  the  move- 
ment of  the  world,  and  it  was  a  movement  in  which 
he  himself  felt  called  upon  to  take  a  part.  For  the 
very  reason  that  he  is  a  watchman,  his  gaze  must 
be  upon  the  nations  round  about.  As  he  mounts  his 
watch-tower,  he  hears  the  noise  of  storm  and  con- 
flict. There  is  confusion  worse  confounded  in  the 
world.  "Ah,  the  booming  of  the  peoples,  the  mul- 
titudes, like  the  booming  of  the  seas  they  boom ;  and 
the  rushing  of  the  nations,  like  the  rushing  of  mighty 
waters  they  rush ;  nations,  like  the  rushing  of  many 
waters  they  rush."  The  prophet  is  no  idle  spectator, 
who  notes  all  this  as  a  matter  of  curious  information 
with  which  he  has  no  personal  concern.  It  is  his 
business  to  bring  some  kind  of  order  out  of  this 
chaos,  to  speak  words  of  warning  to  those  who  are 
in  need  of  warning,  to  send  encouragement  to  those 
who  are  like  men  buffeted  and  driven  by  the  winter 
sea.  And  so  we  have  the  burden  of  Babylon  and 
Moab  and  Damascus,  of  Tyre  and  of  Egypt;  the 
prophet  bears  all  these,  whether  for  weal  or  woe. 


io4  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

No  sturdier  patriot  ever  lived,  but  his  patriotism 
does  not  blind  him  to  the  fact  that  beyond  Jerusalem 
there  lies  the  world. 

In  this  broadness  of  vision,  Browning  again  stands 
by  the  prophet's  side.  It  was  said  of  the  young 
Sordello,  while  he  was  still  dreaming  at  Goito,  and 
wondering  what  life  might  mean  — 

"Beyond  the  glades 
Of  the  fir-forest  border,  and  the  rim 
Of  the  low  range  of  mountains,  was  for  him 
No  other  world." 

It  could  never  have  been  said  of  Bordello's  creator. 
Most  poets  have  their  own  constituency  of  characters, 
so  to  speak,  and  work  with  these.  They  would  not 
know  what  to  do  with  other  types.  Wordsworth's 
interest  in  Goody  Blake  and  Harry  Gill,  in  Peter 
Bell  and  Michael  and  Lucy,  was  so  great  that  it 
crowded  out  all  whose  lot  was  cast  beyond  his  moun- 
tain valley.  He  aimed,  no  doubt,  to  be  universal  in 
his  thought,  but  he  was  provincial  in  his  illustrations. 
Tennyson  is  not  at  home  except  in  England.  It  is 
hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  world  ends  for  him 
at  Dover  Beach.  Matthew  Arnold  is  concerned 
chiefly  with  the  depressed,  though  the  remedies  for 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  105 

depression  which  he  offers  are  pleasant  to  the  taste 
rather  than  desirable  for  food.  But  Browning's 
constituency,  like  Shakespeare's,  is  the  world.  His 
range  is  wide  as  humanity  itself.  He  is  a  man,  and 
there  is  nothing  human  with  which  he  has  not  some 
living  sympathy.  There  is  nothing  exclusive  in  the 
interest  with  which  he  looks  out  upon  the  world. 
Congenial  or  uncongenial,  good  or  bad,  winning  a 
measure  of  success  or  sinking  into  dismal  failure, 
there  is  no  man  whom  he  does  not  find  worth  while. 
He  tells  us,  at  the  beginning  of  "The  Ring  and  the 
Book,"  of  the  finding  of  the  old  manuscript  which 
gave  him  the  foundation  of  his  story.  He  was  cross- 
ing the  Square  of  San  Lorenzo  in  Florence,  and 
stopped  before  one  of  those  street-stalls  where  al- 
most anything  that  could  possibly  be  sold  may  find 
a  place.  There  were 

'Odds  and  ends  of  ravage,  picture-frames 
White  through  the  worn  gilt,  mirror-sconces  chipped, 
Bronze  angel-heads  once  knobs  attached  to  chests, 
(Handled  when  ancient  dames  chose  forth  brocade) 
Modern  chalk  drawings,  studies  from  the  nude, 
Samples  of  stone,  jet,  breccia,  porphyry 
Polished  and  rough,  sundry  amazing  busts 
In  baked  earth,  (broken,  Providence  be  praised ! )  " 


106  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

There  was  a  web  of  tapestry,  now  offered  as  a  mat. 
There  were  books,  long  fallen  from  their  best  estate, 
and  learning  now  that  misery  makes  strange  bed- 
fellows. Perhaps  Browning's  range  of  view  could 
be  no  better  described  than  in  just  these  lines,  and 
others  that  are  no  less  miscellaneous.  He  sees  every- 
thing and  he  goes  everywhere.  Paracelsus'  words 
might  have  been  the  poet's  own  — 

"What  oppressive  joy  was  mine 

When  life  grew  plain,  and  I  first  viewed  the  thronged, 
The  everlasting  concourse  of  mankind." 

And  so  we  follow  Waring  from  England  to  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth.  We  see  life  in  Greece  and 
Israel,  in  France  and  Spain  and  Italy,  three  thousand 
years  ago  and  yesterday.  We  rise  to  the  heights, 
and  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  darkest  corners  of  the 
soul.  For  poet,  as  for  prophet,  the  world  is  large. 

He  who  sees  far  is  likely  to  see  clearly  too.  Things 
group  themselves  before  him,  not  in  a  confused  and 
unmeaning  mass,  but  in  their  right  perspective  and 
proportion.  Isaiah  looked  about  him,  and  he  saw 
men  whose  views  of  life  were  distorted  and  perverse. 
They  made  a  great  deal  of  the  outside  of  things,  and 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  107 

very  little  of  their  inner  meaning.  They  were  stick- 
lers after  the  letter  of  the  law,  while  they  cared 
nothing  for  its  spirit.  They  were  terribly  distressed 
at  the  empty  threats  of  those  who  had  no  power  to 
do  them  harm;  but  to  the  real  danger  of  the  time, 
the  menace  of  Assyria  or  the  guile  of  Egypt,  they 
were  blind  and  deaf.  Some  things  they  knew,  but 
they  did  not  know  what  was  most  worth  the  knowing. 
They  did  not  consider.  They  would  do  anything 
rather  than  think.  As  Isaiah  puts  it,  almost  in  so 
many  words,  there  were  times  when  they  acted  as  if 
the  God  to  whom  they  were  content  to  give  their 
patronage  was  a  fool.  The  delusions  and  hallucina- 
tions of  modern  days  were  not  yet  born,  but  there 
were  those  with  familiar  spirits  whom  they  loved 
to  seek,  and  there  were  wizards  who  peeped  and 
muttered.  The  people  were  prosperous  enough,  — 
too  prosperous;  for  fulness  of  pocket  may  distract 
attention  from  emptiness  of  mind  and  heart.  "  Their 
land  is  full  of  silver  and  gold,  neither  is  there  any 
end  of  their  treasures;  their  land  also  is  full  of 
horses,  neither  is  there  any  end  of  their  chariots." 
Wealth  had  become  mere  impudent  materialism, 
opportunity  was  strangled  at  its  birth,  those  who 


io8  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

should  have  been  gentlemen  and  ladies  were  sots 
and  clothes-horses.  The  prophet  gives  a  list  of  the 
finery  worn  by  the  exclusive  women  of  the  court, 
who  were  "haughty,  and  walk  with  stretched  forth 
necks  and  wanton  eyes,  walking  and  mincing  as  they 
go,  and  making  a  tinkling  with  their  feet,"  that  he 
may  set  forth  its  worthlessness  under  such  conditions. 
In  the  same  way  he  catalogues  the  possession  of  the 
men  upon  which  they  pride  themselves  with  such  as- 
surance. There  are  high  towers  and  fenced  walls. 
There  are  ships  of  Tarshish  and  pleasant  pictures. 
There  are  idols  of  silver  and  idols  of  gold,  which 
each  one  has  made  after  his  own  fancy  for  himself  to 
worship.  But  not  one  of  these  has  any  power  of 
continuance.  Already  evil  days  are  close  at  hand. 
"  They  shall  look  unto  the  earth,  and  behold  trouble 
and  darkness,  dimness  of  anguish;  and  they  shall 
be  driven  to  darkness."  In  that  day  it  is  the  Lord 
alone  who  shall  be  exalted,  the  Lord  whom  they 
have  forgotten,  and  from  whom  they  have  turned 
away. 

But  while  Isaiah  draws  this  sombre  picture  of 
those  who  at  the  moment  were  wearing  every  out- 
ward mark  of  prosperity  and  success,  we  must  not 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  109 

think  of  him  as  one  whose  clearness  of  vision  led 
him  only  to  rub  all  the  bright  colors  out  from  life. 
If  he  sees  very  plainly  evil  when  it  attempts  to  mas- 
querade as  good,  he  sees  good  also  when  it  is  hidden 
from  every  other  eye.  It  is  true  that  there  was  very 
little  to  be  said  in  praise  of  those  contemporaries  of 
his  of  whom  he  speaks  from  time  to  time.  But  for 
Jerusalem  itself  he  never  gives  up  hope.  The  period 
of  national  security  in  which  his  earlier  years  were 
passed  was  followed  by  a  time  of  restlessness  and 
threatening  danger.  The  Assyrians  were  at  the 
city's  very  gates,  demanding  an  entrance  which  it 
seemed  impossible  to  prevent.  There  had  been 
wild  terror,  followed  by  mad  despair.  With  the 
people,  there  was  fierce  revelry.  "Let  us  eat  and 
drink,  for  to-morrow  we  shall  die."  With  the  king, 
there  was  complete  prostration.  He  covered  him- 
self with  sackcloth  and  ashes,  and  waited  what  had 
to  come.  The  messengers  who  had  tried  to  pur- 
chase peace  wept  at  their  failure.  There  was  no 
water  for  the  city. 

While  Jerusalem  is  in  this  condition,  out  of  this 
turmoil  of  fear  and  hideous  uncertainty,  Isaiah 
speaks,  and  passes  it  all  by.  He  does  not  run  away 


no  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

from  a  task  which  is  too  great  for  him,  as  the  king 
had  done.  He  does  not  try  to  forget  a  trouble  that 
he  cannot  heal,  like  the  people  who  turned  their 
panic  into  a  feast.  For  long  he  had  warned,  and 
threatened,  and  pleaded,  and  prayed.  The  prophet 
of  God,  he  had  given  himself  up  to  his  people, 
though  they  had  shut  their  ears  against  him,  and 
mocked  him  in  the  streets.  Though  he  sees  visions, 
he  is  no  visionary.  Because  he  is  a  man  of  God,  he 
does  not  turn  his  back  on  the  affairs  of  men.  But 
now  he  thrusts  aside  the  present,  with  its  noisy  in- 
sistence and  its  anxious  cares.  They  have  thought 
enough  of  these.  Many  and  many  a  time  he  has 
counselled  concerning  them.  But  now,  for  Jerusa- 
lem, there  is  something  more.  The  present  distress, 
the  assaults  of  enemies,  the  unworthiness  of  the 
inhabitants  themselves,  —  none  of  these  can  blot 
out  the  fact  that  it  is  God's  city,  and  so  cannot  be 
destroyed.  And  the  prophet  draws  a  picture  very 
different  from  that  which,  at  the  moment,  must 
have  been  before  his  eyes.  "Look  upon  Zion,  the 
city  of  our  solemnities;  thine  eyes  shall  see  Jeru- 
salem a  quiet  habitation,  a  tabernacle  that  shall  not 
be  taken  down;  not  one  of  the  stakes  thereof  shall 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  in 

ever  be  removed,  neither  shall  any  of  the  cords 
thereof  be  broken."  Other  nations  have  their 
natural  defences,  Egypt  the  Nile,  Assyria  the  Eu- 
phrates; but  they  are  more  strongly  guarded. 
"There  the  glorious  Lord  will  be  unto  us  a  place 
of  broad  rivers  and  streams;  wherein  shall  go  no 
galley  with  oars,  neither  shall  gallant  ship  pass 
thereby."  The  confusion  that  comes  from  many 
voices  is  at  an  end.  There  is  but  one  voice,  and  all 
hasten  to  obey  it.  "The  Lord  is  our  judge,  the 
Lord  is  our  king;  He  will  save  us."  Beyond  the 
weakness  and  the  helplessness  of  men  Isaiah  sees 
the  unchanging  majesty  of  God. 

This  power  of  looking  into  the  very  depths  of 
things  may  be  regarded  as  part  of  the  necessary 
equipment  of  a  prophet.  But  if  its  possession  in- 
dicates the  power  of  prophesying,  then  Browning 
must  be  a  prophet  too.  He  is  concerned  with  men 
and  women  of  his  own  creation,  but  it  is  no  surface 
knowledge  of  them  that  he  gives.  He  sees  them 
through  and  through.  He  tells  us  of  what  happens 
to  them,  but,  more  than  that,  he  tells  us  what  they 
are.  It  is  little  enough  that  he  knows  of  the  star 
that  dartles  the  red  and  the  blue,  but  it  has  opened 


iu  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

its  soul  to  him,  for  all  that.  He  can  put  himself  in 
other  people's  places,  and  look  at  things  from  every 
point  of  view,  as  when,  in  "The  Ring  and  the  Book," 
he  tells  the  same  story  a  dozen  times,  always  with  the 
same  facts,  and  always  with  a  different  atmosphere. 
The  Pope  sits  in  judgment  on  Guido  Franceschini. 
He  would  show  mercy  if  he  dared.  The  weight  of 
his  six  and  fourscore  years  bears  heavily  upon  him, 
and  he  knows  that  there  is  but  a  moment  "while 
twilight  lasts  and  time  wherein  to  work."  Though 
he  is  judge  to-day,  to-morrow  he  may  himself  be 
judged.  He  has  worn  through  the  dark  winter  day 
with  winter  in  his  soul  beyond  the  world's.  The 
more  he  reads  of  the  documents  which  have  been 
submitted  to  him,  the  more  certain  does  he  become 
of  Guido's  guilt. 

"I  find  this  black  mark  impinge  the  man, 
That  he  believes  in  just  the  vile  of  life." 

He  studies  the  case  with  care  and  grave  deliberation, 
but  there  is  not  a  moment's  hesitation  as  to  his  de- 
cision. He  would  not  dare  to  die,  if  he  should  let 
Guido  live.  But  it  is  not  the  Pope,  nor  the  opposing 
lawyer,  nor  the  victim,  nor  any  of  the  witnesses  of 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  113 

the  tragedy,  who  show  us  Guido  at  his  worst.  He 
must  do  that  himself.  Just  as  the  Pope,  in  an  act 
of  severity,  reveals  his  own  gentleness  of  spirit,  so 
does  Guido,  in  his  last  appeal  for  mercy,  sink  to 
the  very  lowest  depths.  He  has  stormed  and  lied 
and  blustered.  He  has  rung  the  changes  upon  his 
cheap  bids  for  sympathy  and  pity.  A  common  cut- 
throat, he  has  grown  eloquent  as  he  described  him- 
self as  a  knight-errant.  Now  all  that  is  past.  The 
last  appeal  has  been  taken,  and  the  time  has  come 
when  he  must  pay  the  penalty.  He  has  been  a 
soldier.  Just  now  he  was  praising  the  Athenian 
who  died  drinking  hot  bull's  blood,  worthy  of  a 
man.  Surely,  he  will  have  no  fear  of  death.  But 
his  orderly  discourse  becomes  more  and  more  frag- 
mentary and  disjointed  until  it  ends  in  a  very  agony 
of  terror. 

"Who  are  these  you  have  let  descend  my  stair? 
Ha,  their  accursed  psalm !    Lights  at  the  sill ! 
Is  it  Open  they  dare  bid  you?    Treachery! 
Sirs,  have  I  spoken  one  word  all  this  while 
Out  of  the  world  of  words  I  had  to  say? 
Not  one  word !    All  was  folly —  I  laughed  and  mocked  1 
Sirs,  my  first  true  word,  all  truth  and  no  lie, 
8 


ii4  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Is —  save  me  notwithstanding!    Life  is  all. 
I  was  just  stark  mad, —  let  the  madman  live 
Pressed  by  as  many  chains  as  you  please  pile. 
Don't  open !     Hold  me  from  them !     I  am  yours, 
I  am  the  Granduke's,  —  no,  I  am  the  Pope's. 
Abate,  —  Cardinal,  —  Christ,  —  Maria,  —  God.  .  .  . 
Pompilia,  will  you  let  them  murder  me?  " 

The  white  light  of  Browning's  genius  shines  into 
every  nook  and  cavern  of  Guide's  soul,  and  we 
know  that  this  is  the  way  that  one  who  was  a  cow- 
ard and  a  bully  all  his  life  long  would  feel  in  the 
presence  of  death. 

But  Browning,  like  Isaiah,  can  do  more  than 
search  the  depths  of  life.  He  can  discern  nobility 
where  it  might  never  have  been  guessed  at.  There 
could  be  no  better  example  of  this  than  the  old 
Grammarian,  who  at  first  sight  is  very  far  from  be- 
ing an  heroic  figure.  There  were  long  years  of  toil, 
when  no  one  ever  heard  his  name.  His  youth  went 
by.  His  eyes  grew  leaden,  and  then  dross  of  lead. 
He  was  racked  with  pain  and  coughing.  His  work 
was  dull.  The  settling  Hoti's  business  cannot  much 
stir  the  blood.  There  were  those  who  would  have 
called  him  from  his  task,  but  he  would  not  so  much 


ISAIAH  AND  BROWNING  115 

as  listen  to  their  words.  This  was  the  purpose  that 
he  set  before  him  — 

"That  before  living  he  'd  learn  how  to  live  — 

No  end  to  learning; 

Earn  the  means  first,  —  God  surely  will  contrive 
Use  for  our  earning." 

And  so  he  labored  on,  resting  securely  in  this  faith. 
The  throttling  hands  of  death  surprised  him  while 
he  was  still  intent  upon  the  same  dull  task.  There 
were  many  to  whom  it  must  have  seemed  a  wasted 
and  cheerless  life.  But  not  his  disciples.  They 
knew  what  it  all  meant,  and  why  he  left  the  world 
to  take  its  way. 

"Others  mistrust  and  say,  'But  time  escapes; 

Live  now  or  never!' 

He  said,  'What's  time?    Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes! 
Man  has  Forever.'  " 

And  so,  when  at  last  the  tired  body  was  compelled 
to  rest,  his  pupils  bore  him  on  their  shoulders  to  the 
mountain  top. 

"Here's  the  top  peak;  the  multitude  below 

Live,  for  they  can,  there; 
This  man  decided  not  to  live  but  Know  — 
Bury  this  man  there? 


n6  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Here —  here's  his  place,  where  meteors  shoot,  clouds  form, 

Lightnings  are  loosened, 
Stars  come  and  go.     Let  joy  break  with  the  storm, 

Peace  let  the  dew  send. 
Lofty  designs  must  close  in  like  effects; 

Loftily  lying, 
Leave  him  —  still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects, 

Living  and  dying." 

It  is  as  inevitable  as  Guide's  panic  frenzy.  For 
such  a  man  there  could  be  no  other  burial-place. 
So  closely  do  poet  and  prophet  come  together  in 
the  ways  in  which  they  set  about  their  work.  With 
each  of  them  there  is  the  same  enthusiasm  of  living, 
the  same  vigorous  utterance,  the  same  appreciation 
of  the  worth  of  what  they  have  to  do.  With  each  of 
them  there  is  the  same  wide  vision,  the  same  instinct 
of  catholicity.  With  each  of  them  there  is  the  same 
clear  insight  into  what  would  never  have  been  re- 
vealed to  common  eyes.  As  we  carry  our  comparison 
more  into  matters  of  detail,  we  shall  find  that  the 
likeness  between  them  becomes  greater  rather  than 
less. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA 

THERE  are  two  dark  backgrounds  against 
which  Isaiah  writes.  About  the  first  of 
these  there  is  nothing  especially  peculiar  nor 
unique.  It  is  the  common  story  of  national 
sin,  of  low  standards,  of  popular  corruption,  of  gen- 
eral demoralization  in  the  state.  A  little  earlier,  it 
had  been  Hosea's  burden  in  Israel.  A  little  later, 
it  was  to  be  Jeremiah's  burden  —  the  same  evil  per- 
sisting under  new  conditions.  It  is  the  story  which 
Juvenal  and  Persius  tell  of  imperial  Rome.  It  has 
been  the  wretched  subject  of  many  moralists  and 
satirists  in  many  lands. 

There  is  a  dreary  monotony  about  lists  of  sins. 
Perhaps  there  is  no  better  way  of  setting  forth  that 
wickedness  is  not  only  wicked,  but  that  it  is  dull 
and  stupid  too.  There  is  nothing  new  here,  noth- 
ing original,  nothing  but  the  same  dead  level  of 
brutality  and  degradation.  Upon  one  form  of  vice 


ii8  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

after  another  the  prophet  calls  down  woe,  but  all  of 
them  alike  come  from  contented  ignorance  and 
brazen  self-satisfaction.  The  miserable  people  have 
succeeded  in  destroying  the  very  foundations  of 
righteousness.  Not  only  do  they  make  sport  of  life, 
and  blot  out  from  it  all  that  is  high  and  holy,  but 
they  call  things  by  false  names,  and  even  while  they 
sin  lay  claim  to  virtue.  They  call  evil  good  and  good 
evil.  They  put  darkness  for  light,  and  light  for 
darkness;  and  bitter  for  sweet  and  sweet  for  bitter. 
As  for  God,  they  have  banished  Him  from  His  own 
world.  "The  harp  and  the  lute,  the  tabret  and 
the  pipe  and  wine  are  in  their  feasts,  but  they  re- 
gard not  the  work  of  the  Lord,  neither  have  they 
considered  the  operation  of  His  hands."  At  the 
very  beginning  of  his  book,  Isaiah,  as  one  who  has 
the  right  to  speak  for  God,  calls  heaven  and  earth 
to  heed  the  Divine  complaint.  "I  have  nourished 
and  brought  up  children,  and  they  have  rebelled 
against  me.  The  ox  knoweth  his  owner,  and  the 
ass  his  master's  crib;  but  Israel  doth  not  know, 
my  people  doth  not  consider.  Ah,  sinful  nation,  a 
people  laden  with  iniquity,  a  seed  of  evil-doers, 
children  that  deal  corruptly;  they  have  forsaken 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  119 

the  Lord,  they  have  despised  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
they  are  estranged  and  gone  backward."  Under 
whatever  forms  it  might  manifest  itself  —  and  its 
name  was  Legion,  as  in  later  days  —  this  was  the 
mother-sin,  the  source  and  breeding-place  of  all 
the  rest.  And  so  the  prophet  speaks  to  his  coun- 
trymen a  parable  of  condemnation.  In  half  a  dozen 
verses  we  find  the  tender  love  which  trusts  and 
gives;  the  hope  which  must  always  go  with  great 
opportunity;  the  stern  justice  which  is  compelled, 
in  spite  of  itself,  to  seek  its  own;  the  righteous  in- 
dignation which  cannot  be  suppressed  when  there 
is  bitter  disappointment  which  ought  never  to  have 
been.  "Let  me  sing  for  my  well-beloved  a  song  of 
my  beloved  touching  his  vineyard.  My  well-beloved 
had  a  vineyard  in  a  very  fruitful  hill;  and  he  made 
a  trench  about  it,  and  gathered  out  the  stones 
thereof,  and  planted  it  with  the  choicest  vine,  and 
built  a  tower  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  also  hewed  out 
a  wine-press  therein;  and  he  looked  that  it  should 
bring  forth  grapes,  and  it  brought  forth  wild  grapes." 
This  is  no  story  without  a  meaning.  Isaiah  calls 
on  those  who  hear  to  speak.  "And  now,  O  inhab- 
itants of  Jerusalem  and  men  of  Judah,  judge,  I 


no  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

pray  you,  betwixt  me  and  my  vineyard.  What 
could  have  been  done  more  to  my  vineyard,  that  I 
have  not  done  in  it  ?  Wherefore,  when  I  looked  that 
it  should  bring  forth  grapes,  brought  it  forth  wild 
grapes?  And  now  go  to;  I  will  tell  you  what  I  will 
do  to  my  vineyard;  I  will  take  away  the  hedge 
thereof,  and  it  shall  be  burnt  up ;  I  will  break  down 
the  fence  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  trodden  down; 
and  I  will  lay  it  waste;  it  shall  not  be  pruned  nor 
hoed,  but  there  shall  come  up  briers  and  thorns;  I 
will  also  command  the  clouds  that  they  rain  no  rain 
upon  it."  Could  there  be  the  slightest  doubt  as  to 
the  application  of  the  parable?  But  the  prophet 
remembers  how  dull  of  mind  and  hard  of  heart  his 
hearers  are.  He  will  take  no  risks  with  those  who 
are  slow  to  understand.  This  is  a  picture  of  them- 
selves, of  the  blessings  which  God  has  showered 
upon  them,  of  the  results  which  their  own  indiffer- 
ence and  negligence  must  surely  bring.  "The  vine- 
yard of  the  Lord  of  hosts  is  the  house  of  Israel,  and 
the  men  of  Judah  his  pleasant  plant ;  and  he  looked 
for  judgment,  but  behold  oppression ;  for  righteous- 
ness, but  behold  a  cry." 

The  sin  of  his  people  must,  of  course,  have  ex- 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  121 

erted  a  powerful  influence  upon  Isaiah's  work.  It 
was  this  which  he  had  to  combat  and  resist.  But 
there  is  another  factor  which  comes  no  less  promi- 
nently forward  in  his  book.  It  may  happen  on  a 
summer  afternoon  that  the  sky  is  obscured  by 
thunder-clouds  which  spread  from  point  to  point 
until  they  have  rilled  the  whole  horizon.  Then, 
back  of  them,  partly  concealed  by  them,  but  mak- 
ing the  blackness  even  blacker  than  it  was  before, 
there  shines  a  dull,  uncanny  light.  It  is  of  none  of 
those  colors  which  we  are  wont  to  see.  It  cannot 
be  described.  It  cannot  be  explained.  It  can  only 
terrify.  We  do  not  know  what  it  means,  but  we 
know  that  it  means  something  out  of  the  common 
run,  and  something  dangerous.  It  may  be  a  violent 
wind  which  shall  uproot  trees  and  tear  down  houses. 
It  may  be  hail  which  shall  pelt,  and  batter,  and 
bruise.  But,  whatever  it  is,  it  is  grim  and  myste- 
rious, the  more  alarming  from  our  very  uncertainty 
about  it. 

Something  of  this  sort  was  the  outlook  from 
Jerusalem  in  Isaiah's  day.  The  sin  of  the  people 
hid  the  heavens.  But  beside  the  sin  which  many 
enjoyed  and  a  few  rebuked,  there  was  a  power  which 


122  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

sooner  or  later  must  be  reckoned  with.  In  Isaiah's 
earlier  chapters  there  are  several  allusions  to  the 
Assyrians.  At  first,  they  were  hardly  more  than  a 
name,  albeit  a  name  to  conjure  with,  like  the  ogres 
which  faithless  nurses  use  to  frighten  children,  and 
depress  their  too  abounding  spirits.  They  were 
surrounded  by  that  glamor  which  the  remote  and 
the  unfamiliar  always  wears.  They  were  too  far 
away,  too  shadowy,  to  inspire  more  than  a  vague 
feeling  of  unrest.  Then  they  came  nearer.  What 
they  lost  in  mysteriousness  they  gained  in  the  sheer 
terror  that  their  aspect  caused.  They  are  no  longer 
a  strange  people,  hovering  about  the  Northern 
horizon,  objects  almost  as  much  of  curiosity  as  of 
fear.  They  have  emerged  from  their  obscurity,  and 
the  part  which  they  play  in  the  field  of  international 
politics  is  no  longer  a  hypothetical  one.  Their  own 
records  tell  us  something  of  their  methods  of  making 
war.  They  speak  of  tempests  of  clubs,  and  deluges 
of  arrows;  of  chariots  with  scythes,  the  wheels  of 
which  are  clogged  with  blood;  of  baskets  stuffed 
with  the  salted  heads  of  those  who  have  dared  to 
array  themselves  against  them.  Isaiah  describes 
the  swiftness  of  their  movements,  the  irresistible 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  123 

force  of  their  attack,  and  the  hideous  desolation 
which  they  bring.  "They  shall  roar  against  them  in 
that  day  like  the  roaring  of  the  sea  and  if  one  look 
unto  the  land,  behold  darkness  and  distress,  and  the 
light  is  darkened  in  the  clouds  thereof." 

When  the  Assyrian  speaks  for  himself,  we  have 
self-satisfaction  carried  to  the  superlative  degree. 
"Are  not  my  princes  altogether  kings?"  He  names 
one  town  after  another  which  has  been  laid  waste 
before  him.  All  are  alike  in  that  baptism  of  blood 
and  fire  which  he  brings.  "  Is  not  Calno  as  Car- 
chemish?  Is  not  Hamath  as  Arphad?  Is  not  Sa- 
maria as  Damascus?"  The  same  destruction  has 
included  all.  And  as  it  has  been,  shall  it  not  be 
still?  Shall  he  who  has  always  been  victorious  now 
fear  defeat  ?  The  experience  of  the  past  brings  con- 
fidence. "Shall  I  not,  as  I  have  done  unto  Samaria 
and  her  idols,  so  do  to  Jerusalem  and  her  idols?" 
Not  only  are  all  enemies  alike  to  this  proud  con- 
queror. The  worship  of  idols  is  the  only  worship 
which  he  can  understand.  The  gods  of  all  nations 
he  despises  with  the  same  scorn. 

But  this  very  confidence  marks  out  the  way  for 
his  destruction.  He  is  too  sure  of  himself  and  of  his 


124  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

power.  In  his  own  eyes  he  is  strong,  and  wise,  and 
prudent.  As  a  boy  robs  a  bird's  nest,  he  has  scat- 
tered every  nation  that  came  in  his  way,  and  there 
was  no  resistance.  "There  was  none  that  moved 
the  wing,  or  opened  the  mouth,  or  peeped."  But 
he  has  forgotten  God,  whose  instrument  he  is. 
"Shall  the  axe  boast  itself  against  him  that  heweth 
therewith?  Or  shall  the  saw  magnify  itself  against 
him  that  shaketh  it?"  The  prophet's  indignation  is 
kindled  against  the  insolence  of  mere  brute  force. 
They  who  have  been  the  blind  messengers  of  God's 
punishment  must  bring  upon  themselves  a  heavier 
punishment  than  any  they  have  inflicted.  Like 
those  whom  they  have  chastised,  they  have  had 
eyes  which  could  not  see,  and  ears  which  could  not 
hear  the  voice  of  God.  They  go  on  their  way  in 
all  their  pomp  of  power.  But  there  is  One  with 
whom  they  have  not  reckoned.  Let  them  beware. 
At  the  very  moment  of  triumph  they  will  find  their 
prey  snatched  from  their  expectant  hands,  they  will 
find  their  proud  imaginings  fading  to  nothing. 
There  is  tremendous  dramatic  intensity  in  the 
prophet's  description  of  their  onward  march.  They 
come  closer  and  closer.  One  place  after  another 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  125 

falls  before  them.  In  the  succession  of  names, 
strange  and  unfamiliar  though  they  are  to  us,  we 
seem  to  hear  the  very  crash  of  things.  It  is  the 
overture  to  some  grim  tragedy.  It  is  the  account, 
indeed,  of  a  march  which  never  took  place,  but  it 
expresses  the  feelings  which  the  real  march  caused. 
The  opposing  force  has  reached  the  border.  "He 
is  come  to  Aiath,  he  is  passed  to  Migron;  at  Mich- 
mash  he  hath  laid  up  his  carriages."  He  surmounts 
whatever  might  have  hindered  his  advance.  "They 
are  gone  over  the  passage ;  they  have  taken  up  their 
lodging  at  Geba ;  Ramah  is  afraid ;  Gibeah  of  Saul 
is  fled."  Consternation  and  dismay  come  with 
them.  "Lift  up  thy  voice,  O  daughter  of  Gallim; 
cause  it  to  be  heard  unto  Laish,  O  poor  Anathoth." 
The  country  is  made  desolate  before  them.  "Mad- 
menah  is  removed ;  the  inhabitants  of  Gebim  gather 
themselves  to  flee."  And  now  the  end  has  come. 
"As  yet  shall  he  remain  at  Nob  that  day;  he  shall 
shake  his  hand  against  the  mount  of  the  daughter 
of  Zion,  the  hill  of  Jerusalem."  But  suddenly  a 
new  power  comes  upon  the  scene.  "Behold,  the 
Lord,  the  Lord  of  hosts ! "  His  onward  progress 
could  not  be  traced  from  place  to  place,  for  He  has 


126  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

been  always  with  the  city.  But  the  Assyrian  has 
had  his  day,  has  boasted  his  last  boast.  The  Lord 
"shall  lop  the  bough  with  terror;  and  the  high  ones 
of  stature  shall  be  hewn  down,  and  the  haughty 
shall  be  humbled." 

This  was  Isaiah's  forecast,  comparatively  early  in 
his  career,  of  what  must  certainly  take  place.  The 
event  justified  his  judgment.  It  was  God  Him- 
self who  had  chosen  the  Assyrians  for  their  work. 
Again  and  again  Isaiah  speaks  of  them  as  the  in- 
struments of  a  Divine  vengeance  upon  those  who 
had  forgotten  the  Divine.  We  have  seen  the  hold 
which  luxury  and  vanity  had  gained  upon  Jerusa- 
lem. If  reformation  from  within  had  become  im- 
possible, the  Lord  would  bring  upon  them  a  reforma- 
tion from  without.  The  prophet  uses  a  vigorous 
and  striking  figure.  The  king  of  Assyria  should  be, 
as  it  were,  a  razor,  with  which  the  Lord  might  shave 
the  land.  The  people  must  eat  the  food  of  scarceness, 
and  where  there  had  been  a  thousand  vines  there 
should  be  thorns  and  briers.  "  I  will  send  him  against 
an  hypocritical  nation,  and  against  the  people  of  my 
wrath  will  I  give  him  a  charge."  Prosperity  had 
spoiled  Jerusalem.  The  Assyrians  bring  that  time 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  127 

of  trial  and  distress  which  will  open  the  way  for 
better  days.  But  they  could  not  understand  their 
position  as  God's  messengers.  "Howbeit  he  mean- 
eth  not  so,  neither  doth  his  heart  think  so ;  but  it  is 
in  his  heart  to  destroy  and  cut  off  nations  not  a  few." 
And  so  we  come  to  the  final  catastrophe.  For  a  long 
time  Assyria  had  been  but  a  menace  in  the  distance. 
There  were  other  triumphs  which  were  more  con- 
venient. But  now  the  Assyrian  army  stood  at  the 
very  gates  of  Jerusalem.  There  was  nothing  lack- 
ing to  mark  the  treachery  and  insolence  of  the  foe. 
He  took  the  tribute,  stripped  from  the  temple,  which 
King  Hezekiah  offered,  and  then  he  came  back  again, 
with  fresh  threats  and  even  more  humiliating  de- 
mands. The  king  of  Assyria  sends  his  messenger, 
the  Rabshakeh,  as  he  was  called,  to  blow  his  master's 
trumpet  and  to  put  forth  all  the  vulgar  powers  which 
might  terrify.  He  stands  without  the  wall  and  argues, 
and  his  argument  is  scarcely  less  savage  than  his 
attack.  "What  confidence  is  this  wherein  thou 
trustest?"  This  is  the  question  which  his  master, 
the  great  king,  bids  him  ask.  Is  it  in  Egypt?  But 
Egypt  is  no  more  to  be  relied  on  than  Assyria.  It 
is  the  cynical  judgment  of  a  knave  upon  another 


iz8  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

knave  whom  he  knows  to  be  no  better  than  himself. 
Is  it  in  God  ?  That  is  even  more  preposterous.  What 
can  God  do  for  them?  God  cannot  be  bought  nor 
sold  nor  played  with.  Then  God  is  a  wholly  negli- 
gible quantity,  a  mere  illusion.  How  about  Hamath 
and  Arphad  and  Sepharvaim  ?  This  is  the  argument 
with  which  the  Assyrian  meets  any  argument  that 
may  arise.  There  was  no  God  found  to  keep  these 
from  falling  into  his  hands.  Why  should  Jerusalem 
expect  to  fare  better?  We  have  egotism  triumphant, 
and  conceit  appearing  as  the  supremest  quality  of 
success. 

All  this  was  in  the  ears  of  the  people,  and  in  a  lan- 
guage that  they  could  understand.  But  there  was  a 
message  for  the  king  as  well.  There  is  the  same  cold- 
blooded impudence,  the  same  effrontery,  the  same 
assurance  of  easy  victory.  Hamath  and  Arphad 
walk  across  the  scene,  as  is  their  unhappy  wont,  and 
are  attended  by  a  retinue  of  others  who  are  in  like 
case  with  themselves.  Let  not  God  deceive  him. 
He  shall  be  utterly  destroyed. 

Then  Hezekiah  goes  into  the  temple  for  the  second 
time.  But  this  time  it  is  not  that  he  may  strip  it  of 
its  beauties  with  which  to  bribe  his  foe.  He  is  in 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  129 

sore  distress,  and  the  narrative  tells  us  how  he  meets 
his  trouble.  The  very  simplicity  of  the  record  adds 
to  its  impressiveness.  "Hezekiah  received  the  letter 
from  the  hand  of  the  messengers,  and  read  it;  and 
Hezekiah  went  up  unto  the  house  of  the  Lord,  and 
spread  it  before  the  Lord."  The  king  at  least  had 
learned  the  lesson  which  the  prophet  had  been  al- 
ways teaching,  that  temporizing  and  half-way 
measures  were  in  vain,  that  there  was  but  one  source 
from  which  lasting  help  could  come.  He  paid  no 
heed  to  the  taunts  of  his  scornful  foe.  Hamath  and 
Arphad  and  their  fate  brought  him  no  dismay.  He 
prayed  for  deliverance.  He  looked  to  heaven  for 
that  safety  which  seemed  so  far  away  from  earth.  It 
was  the  moment  of  extremest  danger,  and  in  that 
moment  we  have  the  confession  of  Isaiah's  faith. 
"Thus  saith  the  Lord  concerning  the  king  of  Assyria; 
he  shall  not  come  into  this  city,  nor  shoot  an  arrow 
there,  nor  come  before  it  with  shields,  nor  cast  a 
bank  against  it.  By  the  way  that  he  came,  by  the 
same  shall  he  return,  and  shall  not  come  into  this 
city,  saith  the  Lord.  For  I  will  defend  this  city  to 
save  it  for  mine  own  sake,  and  for  my  servant  David's 
sake."  It  was  even  as  the  prophet  had  said.  In  a 

9 


130  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

moment  there  came  that  mysterious  destruction  of 
which  we  read  in  Isaiah  and  in  the  Second  Book  of 
Kings.  There  was  no  attack,  no  force  of  arms,  no 
human  interposition.  Was  it  the  breath  of  pestilence, 
or  what  ?  The  record  only  tells  us  that  the  angel  of 
the  Lord  went  forth,  and  carried  death.  An  hour  ago 
there  was  wild  disorder  and  despair  within  the  city. 
Now  there  is  calm.  "Where  is  he  that  counted? 
Where  is  he  that  weighed  the  tribute?  Where  is  he 
that  counted  the  towers  before  he  made  ready  to 
pull  them  down?"  They  have  all  vanished.  That 
deep  speech  will  be  heard  no  more  in  threats  against 
the  city,  that  stammering  tongue  which  they  could  not 
understand  is  still.  Instead  of  chaos  and  commotion 
there  is  peace.  There  is  a  psalm  which  evidently 
refers  to  this  event.  We  see  the  discomfiture  of  those 
who  had  come  up  against  the  holy  city.  Fear  and 
sorrow  have  come  upon  them,  as  upon  a  woman  in 
her  travail.  They  are  broken  like  ships  of  the  sea 
before  the  east  wind.  But  God's  city  is  eternally 
secure.  There  is  no  part  of  her  that  is  not  sacred, 
that  is  not  beloved.  "Walk  about  Zion,  and  go 
round  about  her,  and  tell  the  towers  thereof.  Mark 
well  her  bulwarks,  set  up  her  houses,  that  ye  may 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  131 

tell  them  that  come  after.  For  this  God  is  our  God 
for  ever  and  ever;  He  shall  be  our  guide  unto 
death." 

In  Isaiah's  view,  then,  the  use  of  Assyria  was  this. 
It  was  an  instrument  which  God  employed  to  punish 
a  disobedient  and  gainsaying  people.  It  was  an 
instrument,  for  it  must  be  wielded;  it  could  not 
wield  itself.  The  hand  which  smote  with  it  might 
withhold  it  also;  and  if  in  the  smiting  there  was  re- 
vealed the  Divine  anger,  in  the  withholding  there 
was  revealed  the  Divine  power  and  the  Divine  love. 
To  the  Jews  who  beheld  the  fury  of  the  Assyrian 
attack  it  might  well  have  seemed  as  if  it  were  over- 
whelming and  irresistible;  but  its  force  only  bore 
witness  to  the  greater  might  of  Him  who  could  bring 
it  to  an  end.  To  the  nations  of  that  day  there  must 
have  been  many  times  when  Assyria  appeared  as  an 
insolent  and  blatant  bully,  to  be  feared  and  hated. 
It  was  not  hard  for  Isaiah  to  sympathize  with  this 
conception.  Even  for  him,  especially  in  his  earlier 
days,  it  was  a  half-truth;  but  as  the  years  went  by 
he  came  to  see  that  it  was  that  half  of  the  truth  which 
was  the  least  worth  knowing.  Whatever  Assyria 
might  be  in  itself,  —  and  it  was  everything  that  was 


132  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

terrible  and  brutal,  —  its  value  to  the  prophet  lay  in 
the  fact  that,  in  spite  of  itself,  it  was  compelled  to 
show  forth  God's  power.  In  the  Assyrian  armies, 
their  impetuous  advance  and  their  sudden  check, 
Isaiah  saw  a  living  illustration  of  the  great  truth  that 
wind  and  storm  do  but  fulfil  God's  word.  They 
sought  to  inspire  terror  in  themselves,  and  their 
fiercest  attack  issued  in  the  profoundest  peace.  It 
was  through  Assyria  that  Jerusalem  came  to  under- 
stand herself  and  God. 

When  now  we  pass  from  Isaiah  to  Browning,  from 
the  eighth  century  before  Christ  to  the  nineteenth 
century  of  the  Christian  era,  we  find  ourselves  of 
course  in  an  entirely  new  atmosphere.  Assyria  in 
our  own  day  would  be  an  impossible  anachronism. 
Moreover,  the  poet,  unlike  the  prophet,  is  no  re- 
former. He  is  concerned  with  the  principles  of 
righteousness,  but  the  details  of  unrighteousness, 
whether  individual  or  national,  are  beyond  his 
province.  He  has  none  of  that  feeling  of  personal 
responsibility  for  the  people's  sin  which  pressed  so 
heavily  upon  Isaiah.  But  while  the  gods  like  winged 
bulls  have  long  since  had  their  day,  and  while  that 
uncouth  speech  which  once  struck  terror  to  men's 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  133 

hearts  is  represented  for  us  only  by  a  few  inscriptions 
which  antiquarians  painfully  decipher,  the  ancient 
prophet  and  the  modern  poet  are  concerned  with 
the  same  truth.  Say  what  we  will,  there  is  a  tyranny 
of  life  which  cannot  be  denied.  There  is  a  pressure 
of  material  things  upon  us  from  which  there  is  no 
escape.  The  Assyrian  in  his  modern  form  is  no  less 
conspicuous,  though  he  may  be  less  picturesque, 
than  in  the  days  when  Isaiah  and  Hezekiah  knew 
him.  He  makes  the  same  proud  boastings,  and  we 
know  that  they  are  not  empty  threats.  He  can  point 
to  the  experience  of  the  past  in  proof  of  his  power. 
Calno  is  as  Carchemish.  Samaria  is  as  Damascus. 
Why  should  Jerusalem  escape?  The  noise  of  his 
approach  is  heard  in  the  distance.  He  comes 
nearer  and  nearer.  One  outpost  after  another  has 
fallen  before  him.  Aiath  and  Migron,  Ramah  and 
Madmenah,  are  at  his  mercy.  In  a  moment,  he  will 
be  thundering  at  the  city  gates.  Is  there  need  to 
translate  him  into  the  language  of  modern  life  ?  He 
stands  for  all  those  forces  which  distress,  and  frighten, 
and  hold  our  manhood  in  contempt.  He  is  the  per- 
sonification of  insolent  and  brutal  strength,  without 
intelligence,  without  compassion,  without  mercy, 


134  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

without  love.  He  is  in  the  world  to  conquer  and 
destroy.  He  is  death,  with  all  that  there  is  about  it 
of  grimness  and  horror.  He  snatches  men  from 
their  homes,  and  carries  them  into  desolate  regions 
where  all  things  are  strange.  He  is  decay,  the  failing 
of  the  powers  of  life,  the  evil  days  when  the  doors 
shall  be  shut  in  the  streets,  and  the  grasshopper  shall 
be  a  burden,  when  the  silver  cord  is  loosed,  and  the 
golden  bowl  is  broken.  He  is  sickness  —  the  trem- 
bling heart,  and  failing  eyes,  and  sorrow  of  mind, 
when  there  is  fear  day  and  night,  and  man  has  no 
assurance  of  his  life.  He  is  disappointment  in  its 
thousand  forms.  How  many  a  man  begins  to  build, 
and  is  not  able  to  finish.  How  many  a  man  plants, 
and  another  reaps  the  harvest.  How  many  a  gallant 
undertaking  ends  in  failure.  And  all  these  things, 
the  power  of  materialism  in  every  aspect  and  from 
every  point  of  view,  the  world  without  the  spirit,  the 
army  of  adversaries  that  beleaguer  the  body  and 
besiege  the  soul,  the  Assyrian  seems  to  stand  for.  It 
is  idle  to  deny  their  power.  It  is  real.  Men  must 
die.  Men  must  grow  old.  Men  must  be  laid  aside 
from  work  in  the  midst  of  their  years,  with  plans 
half  carried  out.  Failure  of  some  sort  lies  in  wait 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  135 

for  all  of  us,  except  indeed  for  those  unfortunates 
who  aspire  to  nothing,  and  so  are  at  the  lowest 
possible  level  all  the  time.  The  world  presses, 
and  lays  its  heavy  burden  on  our  backs.  Calno 
is  as  Carchemish.  Hamath  is  as  Arphad.  Sa- 
maria is  as  Damascus.  So  it  has  been.  So  it  will 
ever  be. 

No  optimism  can  deny  this.  No  cheerfulness  of 
disposition  can  overlook  it.  No  faith  can  dismiss 
it  as  a  phantom.  Browning  recognizes  it  in  a  hun- 
dred ways.  But  for  poet,  as  for  prophet,  the  last 
word  on  the  subject  has  not  yet  been  said.  There  is 
another  power  in  the  world  with  which  the  forces  of 
disintegration  and  decay  must  measure  strength, 
and,  however  strong  they  are,  the  other  power  is 
found  stronger  still.  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  looks  without 
misgiving  on  the  coming  of  old  age.  Its  very  in- 
firmities reveal  something  of  God  which  could  not 
be  revealed  before.  The  fierceness  of  life's  battle 
bears  witness  to  the  supreme  importance  of  the  re- 
sult. Dull  circumstance  may  interfere  writh  accom- 
plishment, but  it  cannot  interfere  with  aspiration, 
and  it  is  aspiration  by  which  life  is  measured,  after 
all. 


136  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"Then  welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go. 
Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain. 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;  dare,  never  grudge  the  throe." 

It  is  the  striving  that  brings  out  man's  strength.  It 
is  the  pang  which  proves  his  power  of  endurance. 
It  is  the  daring  which  tests  his  courage. 

In  one  of  Browning's  short  poems,  "Instans 
Tyrannus,"  we  have  what  might  almost  be  a  com- 
mentary on  the  chapters  of  Isaiah  which  describe 
the  Assyrian  arrogance  and  the  Assyrian  overthrow. 
It  is  the  monologue  of  a  tryant  who  has  selected  one 
of  his  subjects  for  his  especial  hatred.  There  was 
no  reason  for  this  fierce  dislike;  a  fact  which  made 
it  all  the  fiercer.  There  is  no  hatred  so  malignant  as 
that  which  springs  of  itself  from  the  slime  and  ooze 
of  some  corrupt  and  bitter  nature.  The  tyrant  taxed 
his  ingenuity  to  the  utmost  that  he  might  plague  and 
vex  his  victim.  He  crushed  him  to  earth  with  sheer 
dead  weight  of  persecution.  He  tempted  him  with 
most  consummate  treachery. 

"I  set  my  five  wits  on  the  stretch 
To  inveigle  the  wretch." 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  137 

And  then,  at  the  last,  he  takes  the  true  Assyrian 
attitude.  Has  he  not  always  had  his  way  ?  Shall  he 
not  have  it  still?  Shall  this  man  find  safety  in  his 
insignificance,  when  the  king  himself  condescends 
to  hate  ?  The  moment  of  his  malicious  triumph  is 
at  hand. 

"I  soberly  laid  my  last  plan 
To  extinguish  the  man. 
Round  his  creep-hole,  with  never  a  break, 
Ran  my  fires  for  his  sake; 
Overhead,  did  my  thunder  combine 
With  my  underground  mine; 
Till  I  looked  from  my  labor  content 
To  enjoy  the  event." 

So  far  as  the  tyrant  could  see,  nothing  was  wanting 
to  the  accomplishment  of  his  design.  He  had  only 
to  wait,  and  watch  his  victim's  fruitless  struggle,  and 
prolong  the  agony  as  much  as  possible.  "He  shall 
shake  his  hand  against  the  mount  of  the  daughter 
of  Zion."  He  settled  himself  in  glad  anticipation. 
So  far  as  he  could  see,  all  was  in  readiness.  But  the 
hitch  came  in  his  plan  because  he  could  not  see  the 
whole  horizon.  The  eyes  of  tyranny,  of  brute  force 
which  becomes  brutality,  are  not  very  sharp.  For 


138  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

all  his  strength  the  Assyrian  had  no  insight  into 
spiritual  things.  Whatever  was  not  like  himself, 
he  dismissed  with  the  same  contemptuous  indiffer- 
ence. In  his  vocabulary,  all  gods  were  alike.  He 
did  not  permit  them  to  interfere  with  his  designs. 
So  with  this  tyrant.  He  had  made  his  plans.  Now 
he  would  carry  them  out.  What  could  prevent? 
Is  not  Hamath  as  Arphad  ?  But  let  us  hear  his  own 
account  of  the  conclusion.  Were  they  two,  oppressor 
and  oppressed,  to  be  the  only  actors  in  the  scene  ? 

"When  sudden  .  .  .  how  think  ye,  the  end? 
Did  I  say,  without  friend? 
Say  rather,  from  marge  to  blue  marge 
The  whole  sky  grew  his  targe 
With  the  sun's  self  for  visible  boss, 
While  an  Arm  ran  across 
Which  the  earth  heaved  beneath  like  a  breast 
Where  the  wretch  was  safe  prest. 
Do  you  see?    Just  my  vengeance  complete, 
The  man  sprang  to  his  feet, 
Stood  erect,  caught  at  God's  skirts,  and  prayed. 
— So,  /  was  afraid." 

The  tyrant's  power  revealed  God's  greater  power. 
He  who  was  threatened  with  destruction  found 
safety  and  peace  in  the  very  extremity  of  his  plight. 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  139 

The  same  idea  is  developed  in  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent way  in  one  of  the  scenes  in  "  Pippa  Passes."  We 
are  shown  a  gang  of  silly  students  whose  uncouth 
spite  vents  itself  against  their  comrade  Jules.  He 
has  been  heard  to  call  them  dissolute,  brutalized, 
heartless  bunglers,  —  and  the  remark  was  libellous 
because  it  was  so  true.  With  fiendish  ingenuity, 
they  contrive  to  entrap  him  into  a  marriage  with  a 
beautiful  fool.  To  wreck  his  life  is  a  small  punish- 
ment for  his  low  opinion  of  themselves.  But  he  will 
not  let  his  life  be  wrecked.  He  takes  the  evil  that 
they  have  done  him,  and  makes  it  over  into  good. 
They  have  deceived  him.  There  is  no  denying  that. 
He  must  give  up  the  ideals  which  he  had  set  before 
himself.  The  old  life  which  he  had  planned  has 
become  impossible.  He  cannot  make  sculpture  his 
first  object,  as  he  had  intended.  Then  he  will  under- 
take the  shaping  of  a  soul. 

"Here  is  a  woman  with  utter  need  of  me. 
This  body  had  no  soul  before,  but  slept 
Or  stirred,  was  beauteous  or  ungainly,  free 
From  taint  or  foul  with  stain,  as  outward  things 
Fastened  their  image  on  its  passiveness; 
Now  it  will  wake,  feel,  live,  —  or  die  again. 


140  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Shall  to  produce  form  out  of  unshaped  stuff 

Be  Art —  and  further,  to  evoke  a  soul 

From  form  be  nothing?    This  new  soul  is  mine." 

He  has  been  tied  to  this  woman  for  his  own 
undoing.  He  turns  it  into  the  occasion  of  her 
making. 

There  are  a  number  of  poems  of  various  kinds, 
ranging  in  character  from  "Abt  Vogler"  to  "Fifine 
at  the  Fair,"  in  which  Browning  speaks  in  an  in- 
cidental way  of  the  manner  in  which  evil  may  be 
forced  to  do  the  work  of  good  in  its  own  despite. 
The  very  incidental  quality,  as  of  something  which 
may  be  taken  for  granted  without  argument  or  ex- 
planation, shows  how  deeply  the  idea  was  rooted  in 
the  poet's  mind.  No  doubt  the  most  conspicuous 
and  striking  illustration  of  it  is  found  in  Browning's 
great  masterpiece.  "The  Ring  and  the  Book"  is 
the  story  of  a  sordid  and  brutal  murder.  The  poet 
brings  before  us  a  little  world,  the  world  of  Rome 
two  hundred  years  ago,  and  we  see  its  people  living 
their  lives  before  our  eyes.  Guido  Franceschini  has 
killed  his  wife  Pompilia,  and  as  if  to  insure  good 
measure  and  settle  all  old  grudges  at  a  single  reck- 
oning, he  has  included  her  old  foster-parents  in  the 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  141 

slaughter.  Had  she  not  fled  from  him,  and  fled  with 
a  priest  ?  And  had  they  not  deceived  him  about  her 
at  the  first,  by  making  him  think  that  she  would  be 
worth  money  to  her  husband,  and  were  they  not  now 
giving  her  aid  and  succor  in  her  flight  ?  The  people 
are  greatly  excited  over  this  deed  that  has  been  com- 
mitted in  their  midst.  It  is  the  talk  of  the  street  and 
of  the  town.  Wherever  one  goes,  one  may  hear 
judgments  upon  it  —  judgments,  as  is  their  wont, 
which  reveal  much  more  accurately  those  who  pro- 
nounce them  than  those  on  whom  they  are  pro- 
nounced. But  little  by  little,  out  of  the  mass  of  half- 
information  and  exaggeration,  of  contradiction  and 
distortion,  of  prejudice  and  sympathy  and  prudish- 
ness  and  pity,  we  come  to  see  the  truth.  Pompilia 
was  married  to  this  man  at  twelve  years  old.  She 
married  him  because  her  mother  bade  her,  as  she 
would  have  run  an  errand,  or  swallowed  a  dose  of 
bitter  medicine.  Guido  was  old,  ugly,  wicked;  but 
he  was  of  the  aristocracy,  and  the  peasant-mother's 
eyes  were  dazzled  by  the  glare.  As  for  his  motives, 
we  may  let  the  Pope  speak,  in  that  searching  analysis 
which  he  brought  to  the  final  consideration  of  the 
case. 


142  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"Not  one  permissible  impulse  moves  the  man, 
From  the  mere  liking  of  the  eye  and  ear, 
To  the  true  longing  of  the  heart  that  loves, 
No  trace  of  these;  but  all  to  instigate, 
Is  what  sinks  man  past  level  of  the  brute, 
Whose  appetite  if  brutish  is  a  truth. 
All  is  the  lust  for  money;  to  get  gold, — 
Why,  lie,  rob,  if  it  must  be,  murder.     Make 
Body  and  soul  wring  gold  out,  lured  within 
The  clutch  of  hate  by  love,  the  trap's  pretence. 
What  good  else  get  from  bodies  and  from  souls? 
This  got,  there  were  some  life  to  lead  thereby, 
—  What,  where,  or  how,  appreciate  those  who  tell 
How  the  toad  lives;  it  lives, —  enough  for  me." 

This  was  the  life  to  which  Pompilia  was  con- 
demned. She  had  had  scarcely  a  thought  beyond 
her  dolls.  Now  she  is  taken  from  her  friends,  in- 
sulted, scorned,  humiliated,  degraded.  She  bore  it 
for  four  years,  but  with  the  approach  of  motherhood 
she  could  not  bear  it  longer.  She  would  not  bring  a 
new  life  into  that  vile  place.  She  sought  for  means 
to  escape,  and  found  a  friend  in  Giuseppe  Capon- 
sacchi,  a  young  priest  to  whom  Guido  himself  had 
sent  forged  letters  in  the  hope  that  he  might  entrap 
Pompilia  into  unfaithfulness.  But  Guido  did  ill  to 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  143 

judge  other  men  by  himself.  Caponsacchi  was 
moved,  not  by  Pompilia's  beauty,  but  by  her  woes. 
He  rescued  her  from  her  jailers  at  Arezzo,  and  she 
came  at  last  in  safety  to  her  parents'  house  at  Rome. 
Though  Guido  followed  them,  and  overtook  them, 
and  brought  against  them  his  false  charges  with 
every  air  of  righteous  indignation  and  injured  inno- 
cence, he  could  not  again  obtain  possession  of  his 
victim.  He  bided  his  time.  After  a  little,  when  she 
had  been  lulled  into  security  by  an  interval  of  peace, 
he  came  to  her  father's  house  at  night  with  hired 
murderers,  and  all  who  were  there  were  stabbed  to 
death.  Pietro  and  Violante  died  at  once.  Pompilia, 
with  twenty-two  wounds  upon  her,  lived  four  days. 
But  it  was  long  enough  for  her  to  tell  her  story. 

Truly,  it  was  the  atmosphere  of  old  Assyria  that 
she  had  breathed,  with  something  of  Egypt's  subtilty 
and  guile  included.  All  about  her  were  hate,  colossal 
selfishness,  the  power  of  brute  force,  "fox-faced  this, 
cat-clawed  the  other,"  with  Guido,  whose  kindness 
was  worse  than  his  dislike.  The  story  begins  in 
blackness,  and  ends  in  blood.  But  out  of  it,  what 
issues?  For  all  the  long  dark  hours,  for  all  the  dim 
twilight  when  men  strained  their  eyes,  and  could  not 


144  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

tell  what  they  saw,  the  sunlight  of  God's  presence 
breaks  at  last  upon  the  world.  Caponsacchi  stands 
before  the  judges,  and  tells  them  what  were  some  of 
his  former  theories  of  life.  He  had  hesitated  a  little 
before  he  became  a  priest.  The  vows  were  too  hard 
for  him  to  bear.  Then  came  a  superior  and  explained 
them  to  him. 

"Guiseppe  Maria  Caponsacchi  mine, 
Nobody  wants  you  in  these  latter  days 
To  prop  the  Church  by  breaking  your  backbone, — 
As  the  necessary  way  was  once,  we  know, 
When  Diocletian  flourished,  and  his  like." 

Now,  something  else  is  required,  something  which  is 
regulated  according  to  the  ability  of  each. 

"I  have  a  heavy  scholar  cloistered  up, 
Close  under  lock  and  key,  kept  at  his  task 
Of  letting  Fenelon  know  the  fool  he  is, 
In  a  book  I  promise  Christendom  next  Spring. 
Why,  if  he  covets  so  much  meat,  the  clown, 
As  a  lark's  wing  next  Friday,  or,  any  day, 
Diversion  beyond  catching  his  own  fleas, 
He  shall  be  properly  swinged,  I  promise  him. 
But  you,  who  are  so  quite  another  paste 
Of  a  man,  —  do  you  obey  me  ?    Cultivate 
Assiduous,  that  superior  gift  you  have 
Of  making  madrigals." 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  145 

On  these  terms,  he  was  ordained.  He  did  as  he  was 
told,  and  lived  according  to  the  easy  prescription 
that  was  given  him.  He  was  such  a  man,  getting 
the  best  of  both  worlds  in  charming  fashion,  when 
he  was  brought  into  contact  with  Pompilia  and  the 
depths  of  life. 

Pompilia's  experience  was  of  a  different  sort,  first 
of  mere  innocence,  and  then  of  black,  sodden,  un- 
relieved misery.  She  seems,  first,  a  child,  and  then, 
a  sufferer.  But  when  the  worst  has  come  to  pass, 
and  she  lies  there,  knowing  that  she  has  but  a  few 
short  hours  to  live,  she  gains  a  view  of  life  that  would 
have  been  quite  impossible  at  any  earlier  moment. 
Is  this  the  girl  who  used  to  have  no  thought  beyond 
a  ribbon  for  her  hair?  Is  this  the  pitiful  victim  of 
Guide's  cruel  hate  ?  Who  is  this  man  of  whom  she 
speaks?  Can  it  be  the  ecclesiastical  darling  of  the 
world  that  is  discreetly  gay,  the  authority  on  the 
proper  manner  of  mounting  fans?  She  tells  of  all 
that  happened,  in  order,  although  her  thoughts  are 
always  on  the  child  whom  she  may  never  know.  Her 
life  with  Guido  was  a  hideous  dream,  all  over  now. 

"It  is  the  good  of  dreams,  so  soon  they  go." 
10 


146  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

She  tells  of  Caponsacchi  and  his  coming. 

"All  day,  I  sent  prayer  like  incense  up 
To  God  the  strong,  God  the  beneficent 
God  ever  mindful  in  all  strife  and  strait, 
Who,  for  our  own  good,  makes  the  need  extreme, 
Till  at  the  last  He  puts  forth  might  and  saves." 

And  then,  at  the  end,  she  turns  away  from  those  who 
are  about  her  bed,  and  calls  upon  Caponsacchi  as  if 
they  two  were  alone  in  the  whole  world.  This  is  no 
weak  woman  speaking  to  her  lover.  This  is  no 
victim  going  sadly  to  her  death.  This  is  no  erring 
wife  who  has  sinned,  and  knows  her  fault.  But, 
from  the  vantage-ground  of  one  who  has  but  an 
hour  more  to  live,  with  the  perspective  which  her 
situation  gives  her,  she  says  what  is  most  worth  the 
saying.  It  was  Caponsacchi  who  came  to  her  help, 
to  his  own  hindrance.  She  is  child  no  longer.  She 
knows  what  men  have  said  and  will  say.  But  her 
words  now  are  not  for  them,  but  for  Caponsacchi 
and  for  God. 

"O  lover  of  my  life,  O  soldier-saint, 
No  work  begun  shall  ever  pause  for  death. 
Love  will  be  helpful  to  me  more  and  more 
I'  the  coming  course,  the  new  path  I  must  tread, 
My  weak  hand  in  thy  strong  hand,  strong  for  that." 


THE  USE  OF  ASSYRIA  147 

But  let  none  of  those  about  her  misunderstand  her 
meaning.  She  knows  that  he  has  vows.  She  would 
not  call  him  from  them.  Marriage  has  been  to  her 
a  word  of  evil  omen.  It  has  meant  cruelty,  not  love. 

"He  is  a  priest; 

He  cannot  marry  therefore,  which  is  right; 
I  think  he  would  not  marry  if  he  could. 
Marriage  on  earth  seems  such  a  counterfeit, 
Mere  imitation  of  the  inimitable; 
In  heaven  we  have  the  real  and  true  and  sure. 
'T  is  there  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given 
In  marriage,  but  are  as  the  angels;  right, 
Oh  how  right  that  is,  how  like  Jesus  Christ 
To  say  that.     Marriage-making  for  the  earth, 
With  gold  so  much,  —  birth,  power,  repute  so  much 
Or  beauty,  youth  so  much,  in  lack  of  these. 
Be  as  the  angels  rather,  who,  apart, 
Know  themselves  into  one,  are  found  at  length 
Married,  but  marry  never,  no,  nor  give 
In  marriage;  they  are  man  and  wife  at  once 
When  the  true  time  is;  here  we  have  to  wait 
Not  so  long  neither.     Could  we  by  a  wish 
Have  what  we  will  and  get  the  future  now, 
Would  we  wish  aught  done  undone  in  the  past? 
So,  let  him  wait  God's  instant  men  call  years; 
Meantime,  hold  hard  by  truth  and  his  great  soul, 


I48  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Do  out  the  duty.    Through  such  souls  alone 
God  stooping  shows  sufficient  of  His  light 
For  us  i'  the  dark  to  rise  by.    And  I  rise." 

Guido  and  his  crew  have  disappeared.  There  is  no 
thought  more  of  the  gaping  wounds.  Evil  has  over- 
reached itself,  and  has  turned  the  pleasure-loving 
priest  into  a  strong  man  of  God,  has  made  a  Madonna 
of  the  tortured  girl.  It  was  as  when  the  Assyrian 
hosts  came  up  about  Jerusalem,  and  did  their  worst, 
and  Isaiah  simply  refused  to  take  account  of  them  at 
all.  They  were  only  for  the  moment.  There  were 
other  things  which  were  more  worth  thought.  "  Look 
upon  Zion,  the  city  of  our  solemnities;  thine  eyes 
shall  see  Jerusalem  a  quiet  habitation,  a  tabernacle 
that  shall  not  be  taken  down."  The  turmoil  and 
confusion  through  which  they  were  passing  only 
made  its  peace  and  permanence  more  sure. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  REMNANT   SHALL  RETURN 

THE  conditions  of  Isaiah's  life  were  such  that 
evil  was  always  very  prominently  before 
his  eyes.  As  God's  servant  and  God's  spokes- 
man, he  was  compelled  to  hate  what  God  hated 
and  to  condemn  what  God  condemned.  He  was 
a  prophet  of  doom,  whose  business  it  was  to  point 
out  the  close  and  inevitable  connection  between 
punishment  and  sin.  And  so  we  have  his  many 
words  of  denunciation,  his  biting  sarcasm,  his  eager 
pleading,  his  stern  rebuke.  We  have  seen  how  he 
discerned  the  working  of  God's  hand  while  the 
history  of  his  time  was  in  the  making,  and  how  he 
perceived  in  the  ruthless  power  of  Assyria  only  a 
manifestation,  half  concealed  and  half  revealed,  of 
the  greater  power  of  God.  With  a  mighty  voice,  he 
declared  that  sin  meant  penalty.  After  the  manner 
of  his  time  and  class,  he  gave  to  one  of  his  sons  a 
symbolical  name  which  should  bear  constant  witness 


ISO  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

to  this  stern  truth.  The  boy  was  called  Maher- 
shalal-hash-baz,  and  the  uncouth  syllables  reminded 
all  who  spoke  his  name  that  there  were  those  who 
were  hastening  to  the  prey,  that  they  might  divide 
among  themselves  the  spoil  of  nations  which  were  in 
rebellion  against  God. 

But  just  as  Maher-shalal-hash-baz  was  not  Isaiah's 
only  child,  neither  was  the  gloomy  doctrine  which 
his  name  expressed  Isaiah's  only  thought.  Though 
men  were  evil,  God  remained  good.  Though  men 
might  turn  away  from  Him,  He  would  receive  them 
when  they  came  back  again.  Though  the  holy  city 
was  full  of  every  kind  of  abomination  and  iniquity, 
it  was  still  the  city  of  the  Heavenly  King,  and  there- 
fore there  was  that  in  it  which  could  not  be  destroyed. 
The  prophet's  other  son  bore  witness  to  this  gentler 
and  more  inspiring  truth.  He  was  called  Shear- 
jashub,  The  Remnant  shall  Return;  and  while  his 
brother's  rugged  name  spoke  plainly  enough  of  man's 
weakness  and  the  distress  that  must  follow  sin,  he 
testified  that  man  has  in  himself  the  power  of  recovery, 
and  that  to  God's  long-suffering  and  loving-kindness 
there  is  no  end. 

These  two  truths,  opposite  but  not  opposing,  the 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         151 

prophet  develops  side  by  side.  We  must  remember, 
indeed,  that  it  is  the  nation  which  is  the  unit  of  his 
thought.  He  is  an  ambassador  whose  concern  is  with 
the  state,  not  a  policeman  who  must  reduce  a  bois- 
terous individual  to  order.  He  speaks  in  public,  not 
in  private,  terms;  and  his  subject  is  not  personal 
salvation,  but  civic  righteousness.  With  all  the 
forces  of  disintegration  that  are  at  work,  there  is 
something  which  will  check  decay,  and  scatter  the 
darkness  which  threatens  to  overwhelm  the  land. 
"Except  the  Lord  of  hosts  had  left  unto  us  a  very 
small  remnant,  we  should  have  been  as  Sodom,  and 
we  should  have  been  like  unto  Gomorrah."  But  this 
remnant  is  indestructible.  Just  as  the  Lord's  hand 
is  mighty  against  those  who  turn  away  from  Him, 
so  is  it  mighty  also  to  save  the  Remnant  which  shall 
return. 

There  is  not  a  section  of  Isaiah's  book  in  which 
there  is  not  at  least  a  suggestion  of  this  comforting 
thought.  It  is  the  prophet's  constant  lament  that 
the  remnant  will  be  very  small,  "  two  or  three  berries 
in  the  top  of  the  uppermost  bough,  four  or  five  in  the 
outmost  fruitful  branches  thereof";  but  its  signifi- 
cance is  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  size.  It  marks 


152  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

the  difference  between  destruction  and  continuance, 
between  blank  nothingness  and  the  service  of  the 
Lord.  A  single  passage  sets  forth  the  far-reaching 
consequences  of  such  a  doctrine,  and  shows  us  the 
prophet's  thought  in  all  the  fulness  of  its  beauty. 
"It  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day  that  the  Lord  shall 
set  His  hand  again  the  second  time  to  recover  the 
remnant  of  His  people  which  shall  be  left,  from 
Assyria,  and  from  Egypt,  and  from  Pathros,  and 
from  Cush,  and  from  Elam,  and  from  Shinar,  and 
from  Hamath,  and  from  the  islands  of  the  sea." 
However  widely  His  people  may  be  scattered,  they 
are  not  beyond  His  reach.  Whatever  the  conditions 
of  their  exile,  they  cannot  lose  the  promise  of  return. 
Moreover,  as  when  Zechariah  prophesied,  the 
restoration  of  Israel  carries  with  it  an  assurance  of 
blessing  for  all  the  nations  of  the  world.  The  out- 
casts of  Israel  shall  be  assembled,  and  the  dispersed 
of  Judah  shall  be  gathered  together  from  the  four 
corners  of  the  earth,  but  in  all  this  there  is  an  ensign 
for  the  nations,  a  rallying  place  where  they  too  may 
come  for  comfort,  and  hope,  and  security,  and  peace. 
The  evil  of  the  former  time  shall  come  to  an  end.  It 
has  worked  out  its  own  destruction,  and  must  die  a 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         153 

natural  death.  "The  envy  also  of  Ephraim  shall 
depart,  and  the  adversaries  of  Judah  shall  be  cut  off ; 
Ephraim  shall  not  envy  Judah,  and  Judah  shall  not 
vex  Ephraim."  The  very  face  of  Nature  shall  be 
changed,  with  the  passing  away  of  that  which  was 
fit  only  for  destruction,  and  with  the  survival  of  that 
which  did  not  require  the  violence  of  chastisement 
and  rebuke.  Where  there  was  defeat,  there  shall  be 
victory.  Where  there  was  flight,  there  shall  be  con- 
quest. Where  there  used  to  be  obstacles  to  progress, 
they  may  go  without  interruption  and  without 
hindrance.  The  prophet  measures  the  triumphant 
future  by  the  innocent  past.  "There  shall  be  an 
highway  for  the  remnant  of  His  people,  which  shall 
be  left,  from  Assyria;  like  as  it  was  to  Israel  in  the 
day  that  he  came  up  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt." 

With  the  view  of  the  sacredness  of  Jerusalem 
which  prevailed  in  Isaiah's  day  and  in  the  troublous 
times  which  followed,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he 
should  be  convinced  that  the  city,  however  heavily 
she  must  be  visited  for  her  sins,  was  yet  too  holy  to 
be  destroyed.  The  Psalter  is  filled  with  this  as- 
surance. Many  of  the  psalms,  of  course,  are  the 
expression  of  personal  experience  and  personal  need, 


I54  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

but,  whenever  Jerusalem  is  spoken  of  at  all,  it  is  as 
the  very  resting-place  of  God.  "The  hill  of  Sion  is 
a  fair  place,  and  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth ;  upon 
the  north  side  lieth  the  city  of  the  great  king;  God 
is  well  known  in  her  palaces  as  a  sure  refuge."  Be- 
cause God  is  in  the  midst  of  her,  she  cannot  be 
removed.  It  is  out  of  Sion  that  God  appears  in 
perfect  beauty.  It  is  in  Sion  that  He  is  praised,  it 
is  Sion  where  He  dwells.  It  is  the  hill  of  Sion 
which  He  loves.  "Very  excellent  things  are  spoken 
of  thee,  thou  city  of  God."  At  a  later  period,  this 
devotion  has  increased  rather  than  diminished. 
"They  that  put  their  trust  in  the  Lord  shall  be  even 
as  the  mount  Sion,  which  may  not  be  removed,  but 
standeth  fast  forever." 

But  Isaiah's  doctrine  of  the  Remnant,  while  no 
doubt  it  is  with  Jerusalem  that  it  has  its  chief  con- 
cern, undergoes  a  development  which  we  should 
hardly  have  expected.  He  has  said  many  bitter 
things  against  Assyria  and  against  Egypt.  The 
meadows  by  the  Nile  shall  become  dry,  and  be  no 
more.  There  is  a  spirit  of  pcrverseness  in  the  land, 
and  Egypt  has  gone  astray  in  every  work,  as  a 
drunken  man  staggers  in  the  way.  There  is  a  double 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         155 

sarcasm  in  the  prophet's  word,  directed  equally 
against  those  who  put  their  trust  where  help  cannot 
be  found,  and  those  who  imagine  that  they  are 
strong  when  they  are  weak,  when  he  declares  that 
the  Egyptians  are  men,  and  not  God,  and  their 
horses  flesh,  and  not  spirit,  and  that  when  the  Lord 
shall  stretch  out  His  hand  both  he  that  helpeth  shall 
stumble,  and  he  that  is  holpen  shall  fall,  and  they  all 
shall  fail  together.  The  Assyrian  is  in  no  better  case. 
He  shall  be  broken  in  pieces,  and  every  stroke  of 
the  staff  of  doom,  which  the  Lord  shall  lay  upon  him, 
shall  be  with  tabrets  and  harps.  He  shall  flee  from 
the  sword,  and  his  princes  shall  become  tributary. 
His  rock  shall  pass  away  by  reason  of  terror,  and  the 
princes  who  have  boasted  so  blatantly  shall  be  dis- 
mayed. This  is  the  attitude  of  Isaiah  to  which  we 
are  accustomed  towards  these  public  enemies.  But 
there  is  an  amazing  exception  to  these  threats  of 
doom.  "In  that  day"  —  the  day  of  redemption  and 
deliverance  which  shall  come  —  "in  that  day  there 
shall  be  a  highway  out  of  Egypt  to  Assyria,  and  the 
Assyrian  shall  come  into  Egypt,  and  the  Egyptian 
into  Assyria;  and  the  Egyptians  shall  worship  with 
the  Assyrians.  In  that  day  shall  Israel  be  the  third 


156  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

with  Egypt  and  with  Assyria,  a  blessing  in  the  midst 
of  the  earth ;  for  that  the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  blessed 
them,  saying,  Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people,  and  As- 
syria the  work  of  my  hands,  and  Israel  mine  inherit- 
ance." The  roads  that  were  once  so  closely  guarded 
are  open  to  all  who  care  to  come  and  go.  The  one- 
time enemies  are  united  in  a  common  service.  The 
nations  which  had  brought  the  Divine  displeasure 
upon  themselves  now  know  the  tenderness  of  the 
Divine  love.  In  the  last  analysis,  it  is  not  because  of 
God's  care  for  the  Holy  City,  but  because  there  is 
something  in  the  very  nature  of  man  which  is  akin 
to  God  Himself,  which  makes  it  inevitable  that  in 
every  nation,  however  far  it  may  have  wandered  from 
the  way,  there  is  a  Remnant  which,  some  time,  some- 
how, must  return  to  God. 

Between  the  prophet  and  the  poet  there  is  this 
great  difference,  that  the  one  is  concerned  with 
people  in  the  mass,  the  other  with  the  separate  men 
and  women  of  his  poems.  In  passing  from  Isaiah  to 
Browning,  or  from  any  man  who  deals  with  the 
affairs  of  state  to  another  man  who  deals  with  matters 
of  the  soul,  the  whole  subject  must  be  put  on  a  new 
plane.  But,  aside  from  this,  we  find  in  the  modern 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         157 

English  poet  all  that  the  ancient  Hebrew  prophet 
has  set  forth.  He  comes  to  it  under  many  figures, 
and  from  many  points  of  view.  Just  as  Isaiah's 
vision  of  restoration  included  not  only  Israel,  to 
which  he  belonged,  but  Egypt  and  Assyria,  which 
were  alien  even  when  they  were  not  hostile,  so 
Browning's  corresponding  thought  has  the  very 
widest  range.  Perhaps  there  is  no  subject  which 
better  illustrates  that  universality  of  his  which  we 
have  already  noticed.  In  the  most  forlorn  specimen 
he  can  find  something  which  belies  the  forlornness, 
and  which  gives  at  least  a  suggestion  of  better  things. 
It  is  not  only  of  the  redemption  from  actual  sin  of 
which  be  speaks.  In  the  midst  of  vulgarity  there  is 
something  which  makes  for  refinement,  in  supersti- 
tion and  incredulity,  the  believing  too  much  and  the 
believing  too  little,  faith  and  reason  are  not  utterly 
destroyed.  This  is  no  small  part  of  the  thesis  of 
"Christmas  Eve."  Driven  by  stress  of  weather, 
the  poet  takes  refuge  in  a  wretched  little  chapel  in 
the  middle  of  a  yet  more  wretched  common,  to  which 
there  comes  a  congregation  most  wretched  of  all. 
It  is  the  very  apotheosis  of  everything  that  would 
offend  good  taste. 


158  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"In  came  the  flock;  the  fat  weary  woman, 
Panting  and  bewildered,  down-clapping 
Her  umbrella  with  a  mighty  report, 
Grounded  it  by  me,  wry  and  flapping, 
A  wreck  of  whalebones;  then,  with  a  snort, 
Like  a  startled  horse,  at  the  interloper, 
(Who  humbly  knew  himself  improper, 
But  could  not  shrink  up  small  enough)  — 
Round  to  the  door,  and  in —  the  gruff 
Hinge's  invariable  scold 
Making  my  very  blood  run  cold." 

She  was  followed  by  a  "many-tattered  little  old- 
faced  peaking  sister-turned-mother,"  with  a  dirty- 
faced  baby  to  take  care  of.  Then  there  came  a 
female  something  in  dirty  satins,  "all  that  was  left 
of  a  woman  once."  There  was  a  man  with  a  wen, 
none  of  whose  misery  is  left  to  the  imagination. 
But  the  congregation  was  nothing  to  the  sermon,  and 
the  manner  in  which  the  sermon  was  received. 

"The  hot  smell  and  the  human  noises, 
And  my  neighbor's  coat,  the  greasy  cuff  of  it, 
Were  a  pebble-stone  that  a  child's  hand  poises, 
Compared  with  the  pig-of-lead-like  pressure 
Of  the  preaching-man's  immense  stupidity, 
As  he  poured  his  doctrine  forth,  full  measure, 
To  meet  his  audience's  avidity. 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         159 

No  sooner  got  our  friend  an  inkling 

Of  treasure  hid  in  the  Holy  Bible, 

Than  he  handled  it  so,  in  fine  irreverence. 

As  to  hug  the  book  of  books  to  pieces; 

And,  a  patchwork  of  chapters  and  texts  in  severance, 

Not  improved  by  the  private  dog's  ears  and  creases, 

Having  clothed  his  own  soul  with,  he'd  fain  see  equipt 

yours  — 

So  tossed  you  again  your  Holy  Scriptures. 
And  you  picked  them  up  in  a  sense,  no  doubt; 
Nay,  had  but  a  single  face  of  my  neighbors 
Appeared  to  suspect  that  the  preacher's  labors 
Were  help  which  the  world  could  be  saved  without, 
'T  is  odds  but  I  might  have  borne  in  quiet 
A  qualm  or  two  at  my  spiritual  diet, 
Or  (who  can  tell?)  perchance  even  mustered 
Somewhat  to  urge  in  behalf  of  the  sermon; 
But  the  flock  sat  on,  divinely  flustered, 
Sniffing,  methought,  its  dew  of  Hermon 
With  such  content  in  every  snuffle 
As  the  devil  inside  us  loves  to  ruffle. 
My  old  fat  woman  purred  with  pleasure, 
And  thumb  round  thumb  went  twirling  faster, 
While  she,  to  his  periods  keeping  measure, 
Maternally  devoured  the  pastor." 

It  was  too  much.  The  poet's  gorge  rose  at  the  adora- 
tion of  the  absurd,  the  muddling  of  truth  with 
contented  ignorance. 


160  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"I  flung  out  of  the  little  chapel." 

As  he  went,  there  came  to  him  thoughts  and 
visions.  He  had  seen  God's  power  in  the  immensity 
of  the  heavens,  but  he  had  felt  God's  love  in  his 
heart,  the  mightier  of  the  two. 

"The  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  god 
Amid  his  worlds,  I  will  dare  to  say." 

As  he  thought  thus  of  God's  love,  suddenly  — 

"All  at  once  I  looked  up  with  terror. 
He  was  there. 

He  Himself  with  His  human  air. 
On  the  narrow  pathway,  just  before. 
I  saw  the  back  of  Him,  no  more  — 
He  had  left  the  chapel,  then,  as  I. 
I  forgot  all  about  the  sky. 
No  face;  only  the  sight 
Of  a  sweepy  garment,  vast  and  white, 
With  a  hem  that  I  could  recognize. 
I  felt  terror,  no  surprise; 
My  mind  filled  with  the  cataract 
At  one  bound  of  the  mighty  fact. 
I  remember,  He  did  say, 
Doubtless,  that  to  this  world's  end, 
Where  two  or  three  should  meet  and  pray, 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN          161 

He  would  be  in  the  midst,  their  friend; 
Certainly  He  was  there  with  them ! " 

"He  disdains  not  His  own  thirst  to  slake 
At  the  poorest  love  was  ever  offered." 

Though  He  had  left  the  chapel,  it  was  not,  like  the 
poet,  through  disgust  at  the  burlesque  uncouthness 
of  the  worship  that  was  rendered  there.  Rather,  it 
was  because  there  were  other  regions  which  He  must 
visit,  other  places  which  He  must  bless.  While  the 
poet  still  clings  to  the  hem  of  the  Divine  garment, 
they  come  to  Rome,  and  stand  before  St.  Peter's 
at  some  high  festival. 

"Her  teaching  is  not  so  obscured 
By  errors  and  perversities, 
That  no  truth  shines  athwart  the  lies; 
And  He,  whose  eye  detects  a  spark 
Even  where,  to  man's,  the  whole  seems  dark, 
May  well  see  flame  where  each  beholder 
Acknowledges  the  embers  smoulder." 

But  presently,  there  is  something  more  than  this  calm 
tolerance;  there  is  fellowship. 

"Do  these  men  praise  Him?    I  will  raise 
My  voice  up  to  their  point  of  praise ! 
I  see  the  error,  but  above 
The  scope  of  error,  see  the  love." 


1 62  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

And  at  the  last,  there  is  a  point  of  view  which  can 
arouse  enthusiasm  even  over  an  asceticism  which 
might  well  enough  have  seemed  useless,  or  worse. 
There  are  those  who  have  turned  their  backs  upon 
much  of  the  glory,  the  beauty,  the  wonder,  the 
majesty,  of  the  world.  They  need  not  to  have  done 
so.  They  ought  not  to  have  done  so.  Do  not  say  that 
until  you  know  why  they  have  given  up  what  is  so 
good.  It  was  not  through  indifference  or  contempt, 
but 

"All  these  loves,  late  struggling  incessant, 

When  faith  has  at  last  united  and  bound  them, 

They  offer  up  to  God  for  a  present." 

There  can  be  no  blame  for  such  an  act  as  that,  but 
the  reverse. 

"Why,  I  will,  on  the  whole,  be  rather  proud  of  it, — 
And,  only  taking  the  act  in  reference 
To  the  other  recipients  who  might  have  allowed  of  it, 
I  will  rejoice  that  God  had  the  preference." 

It  is  the  same,  again,  when  they  come  to  the 
German  professor,  "three  parts  sublime  to  one 
grotesque."  He  has  robbed  Christianity  of  all  that 
makes  it  what  it  is,  but  he  sees  the  Divine  beauty 
even  while  he  speaks  of  the  myth  of  Christ.  The 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         163 

vision  does  not  turn  away,  and  the  poet  would  con- 
clude with  a  panegyric  upon  tolerance  — 

"A  value  for  religion's  self, 
A  carelessness  about  the  sects  of  it. 
Let  me  enjoy  my  own  conviction, 
Not  watch  my  neighbor's  faith  with  fretfulness, 
Still  spying  there  some  dereliction 
Of  truth,  perversity,  forgetfulness ! 
Better  a  mild  indifferentism —  " 

But  there  is  something  wholly  inadequate  in  such  a 
termination,  and  taken  by  itself  it  would  be  little 
more  than  a  misleading  parody.  The  lazy  glow  of 
benevolence  towards  the  beliefs  of  another  cannot 
take  the  place  of  one's  own  belief.  Though  Brown- 
ing has  but  little  to  say  of  Christ  —  he  speaks  of 
men,  not  of  God  —  He  is  yet  for  him  the  Light  of 
every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  that  catholicity  of  interest,  that  insistence 
upon  the  worth  of  the  most  worthless  man,  from 
which  there  is  no  escaping  in  his  work.  But  for  the 
very  reason  that  He  is  the  light  of  every  man,  we  can- 
not see  by  another's  light.  We  must  have  our  own. 
The  soul  which  built  for  itself  the  palace  of  art  held 
no  form  of  creed,  but  contemplated  all.  Its  tolerance, 
founded  upon  a  narrow  satisfaction  with  itself 


164  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

rather  than  upon  any  breadth  of  sympathy  with 
others,  contributed  to  its  undoing.  Men  were  put 
into  the  world  to  act,  not  to  look  on.  Tolerance  is 
no  doubt  a  part,  —  only  a  part  —  of  man's  duty 
towards  his  neighbor;  but  his  duty  towards  God 
remains.  And  so  the  poem  is  not  yet  ended. 

"Needs  must  there  be  one  way,  our  chief 
Best  way  of  worship;  let  me  strive 
To  find  it,  and  when  found,  contrive 
My  fellows  also  take  their  share ! 
This  constitutes  my  earthly  care; 
God's  is  above  it  and  distinct. 
For  I,  a  man,  with  men  am  linked, 
And  not  a  brute  with  brutes;  no  gain 
That  I  experience,  must  remain 
Unshared;  but  should  my  best  endeavor 
To  share  it,  fail  —  subsisteth  ever 
God's  care  above,  and  I  exult 
That  God,  by  God's  own  ways  occult, 
May —  doth,  I  will  believe —  bring  back 
All  wanderers  to  a  single  track. 
Meantime,  I  can  but  testify 
God's  care  for  me —  no  more  can  I  — 
It  is  but  for  myself  I  know." 

And  the  last  word  of  all  is  a  reminder  that  practice  is 
better  than  precept.  The  vision  was  a  dream.  The 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         165 

little  chapel  where  the  poet  was  betrayed  into  un- 
timely sleep  has  lost  none  of  its  meanness  and 
uncouthness.  The  preacher  speaks  through  his  nose. 
His  gesture  is  too  emphatic.  Unlike  St.  Paul,  but 
like  too  many  of  his  kind,  alas!  he  fights  as  one 
that  beateth  the  air.  Beside  what's  pedagogic,  his 
subject-matter  itself  lacks  logic.  His  English  is 
ungrammatic.  In  pastor  and  people,  there  is  every- 
thing that  is  offensive  and  absurd.  But  muddy 
water  is  better  than  none  at  all,  and  treasure  held  in 
earthen  vessels  is  treasure  still.  The  poet  has  learned 
his  lesson.  He  must  be  himself,  but  he  can  adapt 
himself  to  conditions  as  he  finds  them.  Because 
things  are  not  at  all  as  he  would  choose  to  have  them, 
he  may  not  dismiss  them  with  sweeping  condemna- 
tion, there  is  no  excuse  for  him  to  stand  aloof.  Nor 
does  he. 

"May  truth  shine  out,  stand  ever  before  us! 
I  put  up  pencil  and  join  chorus 
To  Hephzibah  Tune,  without  further  apology, 
The  last  five  verses  of  the  third  section 
Of  the  seventeenth  hymn  of  Whitfield's  Collection, 
To  conclude  with  the  Doxology." 

It  may  be  felt  that  in  a  poem  like  this,  although  it 
shows   us   "remnants"   of  one   sort   and   another, 


1 66  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

rescued  from  catastrophes  of  vulgarity,  of  wholesale 
credulousness  and  general  unbelief,  the  subject  is 
treated  very  largely  from  an  academic  point  of  view. 
Allowing  for  all  the  difference  that  there  must  be 
between  a  question  of  national  existence  and  a 
question  of  individual  salvation,  this  truth  at  the  root 
of  error,  this  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil,  is  not 
quite  the  remnant  which  Isaiah  describes  as  turning 
back  to  God  out  of  its  wrong-doing  and  its  sin.  But 
as  the  doctrine  develops  under  Browning's  hand,  we 
shall  see  that  he  covers  all  of  Isaiah's  ground, 
although  his  mountain  summit  is  reached  by  a 
much  more  gradual  ascent,  and  therefore  requires  a 
much  larger  surface.  In  his  own  sphere,  what  Isaiah 
teaches  as  positive  truth  and  with  the  authority  of 
the  prophetic  order,  Browning  teaches  too;  and  he 
teaches  it  with  an  assurance  which  is  far  stronger 
than  any  pious  hope.  Meanwhile,  there  are  a  hun- 
dred suggestions  of  the  thought,  and  approximations 
to  it,  many  of  them,  after  Browning's  manner, 
brought  in  as  mere  parentheses  and  asides  to  some- 
thing else.  There  are  these  verses  from  "Cristina," 
in  which  he  speaks  of  the  depths  that  may  be  found 
in  the  soul  of  any  man,  and  the  clearness  of  vision 
which  may  come  when  it  is  least  expected 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         167 

"Oh  we're  sunk  enough  here,  God  knows! 

But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure  though  seldom,  are  denied  us, 

When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 

And  apprize  it  if  pursuing 
Or  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way, 

To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 

"There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnights, 

There  are  fire-flames  noondays  kindle, 
Whereby  piled-up  honors  perish, 

Whereby  swollen  ambitions  dwindle, 
While  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse 

Which  for  once  had  play  unstifled 
Seems  the  sole  work  of  a  life  time, 

That  away  the  rest  have  trifled." 

There  is  the  forlorn  hope  of  which  "The  Last  Ride 
Together"  speaks.  The  barest  chance  that  all  may 
not  be  lost  is  enough  to  set  the  pulses  tingling.  It  is 
a  story  of  hopeless  love. 

"All,  my  life  seemed  meant  for,  fails." 

There  is  nothing  to  look  forward  to  but  separation 
and  vain  regret.  But  may  there  not  be  one  last 
ride  before  the  parting  comes?  So,  at  any  rate, 
one  day  more  is  snatched  from  the  dull  round  of 


168  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

misery  which  looms  ahead.  And  who  can  tell  what 
may  happen  ? 

"Who  knows  but  the  world  may  end  to-night?" 

Sometimes  we  come  upon  Browning's  thought  of 
the  remnant,  gained  of  course  by  a  very  different 
road  from  that  along  which  Isaiah  travels,  as  he 
points  out  for  us  how  closely  good  and  bad  are  inter- 
mingled in  this  world.  For  him,  there  can  be  none 
of  that  easy  separation  between  sheep  and  goats 
which  has  been  the  pride  of  prigs  and  the  restless 
desire  of  semi-theologians. 

"Best  people  are  not  angels  quite; 
While  not  the  worst  of  people's  doings  scare 
The  devil." 

In  his  description  of  Pietro  and  Violante,  he  gives 
a  commentary  upon  what  we  may  accept  as  the 
average  of  mankind. 

"Foul  and  fair, 

Sadly-mixed  natures;  self-indulgent,  yet 
Self-sacrificing  too;  how  the  love  soars, 
How  the  craft,  avarice,  vanity,  and  spite 
Sink  again !  So  they  keep  the  middle  course, 
Slide  into  silly  crime  at  unaware, 
Slip  back  into  the  stupid  virtue,  stay 
Nowhere  enough  for  being  classed." 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         169 

Uncomplimentary  as  this  account  is,  stupid  and 
commonplace  and  unintentional  as  their  virtue  may 
be,  still  there  is  virtue  there.  And  there  is  virtue 
to  be  found  in  every  man  and  woman  of  whom 
Browning  writes;  nay,  there  is  more  than  virtue, 
unless  we  think  of  virtue  as  something  which  cannot 
be  overborne,  which  is  certain  of  ultimate  victory, 
however  long  and  hard  may  be  the  struggle.  In 
"Fifine  at  the  Fair,"  a  weak  man  speaks  strong 
words. 

"Partake  my  confidence!  No  creature's  made  so  mean 
But  that,  some  way,  it  boasts,  could  we  investigate, 
Its  supreme  worth;  fulfils,  by  ordinance  of  fate, 
Its  momentary  task,  gets  glory  all  its  own, 
Tastes  triumph  in  the  world,  pre-eminent,  alone." 

And  so,  in  Browning's  characters,  there  is  always 
this  possibility  of  something  better,  which  comes 
when  we  do  not  look  for  it,  but  which  cannot  be 
lost  sight  of  nor  denied.  He  paints  the  common 
interests  of  life  in  reds  and  blues,  but  he  is  by  no 
means  chary  of  laying  on  the  black.  In  the  produc- 
tion of  villains,  there  are  very  few  poets  who  are 
his  equal.  But,  in  the  very  "absolutest  drench  of 
dark,"  we  are  made  to  feel  that  the  last  word  has 


170  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

not  been  said.  Le*once  de  Miranda,  the  hero  of 
"Red  Cotton  Nightcap  Country,"  was  weak  and 
self-centred  all  his  life;  the  word  hero  can  be  ap- 
plied to  such  a  man  only  in  the  strictest  literary 
sense;  but,  at  the  moment  of  his  death,  he  revealed 
a  strength  of  which  there  had  been  no  glimpse  be- 
fore. Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium  was  a  knave,  a  coward, 
and  a  fool,  turning  men's  tenderest  feelings  into  mer- 
chandise, and  caring  for  nothing  except  the  cash 
which  he  calls  "God's  sole  solid  in  this  world." 
He  was  caught  out  in  his  deception,  and  confessed 
because  there  was  nothing  else  for  him  to  do.  He 
stands  a  self-admitted  fraud.  But  he  cannot  end 
his  story  so. 

"You  've  heard  what  I  confess;  I  don't  unsay 
A  single  word ;  I  cheated  when  I  could, 
Rapped  with  my  toe-joints,  set  sham  hands  at  work, 
Wrote  down  names  weak  in  sympathetic  ink, 
Rubbed  odic  lights  with  ends  of  phosphor  match, 
And  all  the  rest;  believe  that;  believe  this, 
By  the  same  token,  though  it  seems  to  set 
The  crooked  straight  again,  unsay  the  said, 
Stick  up  what  I've  thrown  down;  I  can't  help  that, 
It's  truth!  I  somehow  vomit  truth  to-day. 
This  trade  of  mine —  I  don't  know,  can't  be  sure, 
But  there  was  something  in  it,  tricks  and  all ! " 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         171 

It  is  not  an  apology  which  could  rehabilitate  a 
scoundrel  as  an  honest  man ;  but  as  he  goes  on  with 
a  long  discussion  of  those  presentiments  and  pre- 
monitions which  may  mean  so  little  or  so  much,  we 
are  made  to  realize  that  he  is  trying  to  excuse  him- 
self to  himself,  and  that  the  man  who  has  deliberately 
chosen  lying  as  a  profession  yet  has  reverence  for 
truth. 

Of  Browning's  villains,  no  doubt  Guido  Frances- 
chini  is  the  chief.  He  is  in  the  class  with  lago  or 
with  the  Shakespeare  version  of  King  Richard  III., 
except  that  their  crimes  were  on  a  larger  scale  than 
his,  and  therefore  seem  a  little  more  worth  while. 
We  have  seen  something  of  his  prostitution  of  every 
noble  quality  that  man  could  possess,  of  the  hideous 
travesty  upon  his  kind  that  he  presents  with  his 
hypocrisy,  his  cringing  cowardice,  his  brutal  bully- 
ing force.  But  when  the  Pope  comes  to  weigh  the 
case,  while  there  is  nothing  that  he  can  say  for  Guido, 
there  is  yet  this  hope  of  a  Divine  spark  which  may 
be  lurking  somewhere,  and  which,  somehow  or 
other,  may  be  brought  to  light.  Mercy  would  be 
a  mockery,  a  mistaken  kindness  that  could  only 
plunge  the  wretch  into  deeper  damnation.  The 


172  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

only  leniency  that  man  could  show  was  to  insist 
upon  immediate  and  condign  punishment.  But 
after  man  has  spared  not,  it  may  be  that  God  can 
help,  that  Guido  will  be  saved  in  his  own  despite. 
Even  while  the  Pope  signs  the  order  for  execution, 
with  the  old  prophetic  flinging  of  himself  on  God 
he  looks  for  that  remnant  of  the  soul  which  may 
not  be  cut  off  from  God  forever. 

"I  have  no  hope 

Except  in  such  a  suddenness  of  fate. 
I  stood  at  Naples  once,  a  night  so  dark 
I  could  have  scarce  conjectured  there  was  earth 
Anywhere,  sky  or  sea  or  world  at  all; 
But  the  night's  black  was  burst  through  by  a  blaze  — 
Thunder  struck  blow  on  blow,  earth  groaned  and  bore, 
Through  her  whole  length  of  mountain  visible; 
There  lay  the  city  thick  and  plain  with  spires 
And,  like  a  ghost  disshrouded,  white  the  sea. 
So  may  the  truth  be  flashed  out  by  one  blow, 
And  Guido  see,  one  instant,  and  be  saved. 
Else  I  avert  my  face,  nor  follow  him 
Into  that  sad  obscure  sequestered  state 
Where  God  unmakes  but  to  remake  the  soul 
He  else  made  first  in  vain;  which  must  not  be!" 

The  necessity  is  made  to  lie  in  the  heart  of  God 
rather  than  in  the  will  of  man. 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         173 

There  are  many  other  illustrations  which  might  be 
given,  bearing  more  or  less  closely  upon  this  theme, 
but  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  poet  and 
prophet,  so  far  as  this  subject  is  concerned,  move 
largely  along  parallel  lines  of  thought.  Browning 
sums  up  the  whole  matter  when  he  speaks  in  his 
own  person  of  the  threatened  destruction  of  the  Paris 
Morgue.  He  tells  us  how  he  entered  the  little 
building  which,  perched  where  the  waters  of  the 
Seine  divide  to  form  the  island,  seems  almost  to  be 
waiting  for  its  prey.  There,  enthroned  each  on  his 
copper  couch,  lay  the  three  men  who,  yesterday,  of 
all  the  men  in  Paris,  had  most  abhorred  their  lives, 
and  so  had  killed  themselves. 

"Poor  men,  God  made,  and  all  for  that! 

The  reverence  struck  me;  o'er  each  head 
Religiously  was  hung  its  hat, 

Each  coat  dripped  by  the  owner's  bed, 
Sacred  from  touch;  each  had  his  berth, 
His  bounds,  his  proper  place  of  rest, 
Who  last  night  tenanted  on  earth 

Some  arch,  where  twelve  such  slept  abreast, — 
Unless  the  plain  asphalte  seemed  best." 

They  had  met  violent  death;    no  doubt  they  had 
lived  violent  and  ungoverned  lives.    This  one,  per- 


174  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

haps,  had  coveted  what  was  far  beyond  his  reach, 
and  could  stand  no  longer  the  thought  of  his  own 
inconsequence  and  helplessness.  This  one  had 
hated  his  kind  so  bitterly  that  the  hatred  came  at 
last  to  include  himself.  This  one  had  let  his  lower 
nature  take  the  reins,  and  could  not  bear  it  when 
he  came  to  grief.  There  was  a  moral  to  it  all,  of 
course,  but  with  the  moral,  which  he  who  ran  might 
read,  there  was  a  confidence  which  nothing  could 
dispel. 

"It's  wiser  being  good  than  bad; 

It's  safer  being  meek  than  fierce' 
It's  fitter  being  sane  than  mad. 

My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 

That,  after  last,  returns  the  first, 
Though  a  wide  compass  round  be  fetched; 

That  what  began  best,  can't  end  worst, 
Nor  what  God  blessed  once,  prove  accurst." 

The  remnant  shall  return.  Neither  Isaiah  nor 
Browning  were  men  who  were  disposed  to  regard 
evil  lightly.  The  heresies  and  intellectual  dis- 
orders of  our  own  day,  which  turn  evil  into  a  cheap 
jest  or  a  trifling  hallucination,  were  not  yet  born; 


THE  REMNANT  SHALL  RETURN         175 

but  we  may  be  sure  that  they  would  have  had  little 
sympathy  either  from  poet  or  prophet.  Their  as- 
surance came  to  them,  not  because  they  belittled 
evil,  but  because  they  made  much  of  God.  In  the 
nation's  darkest  hour,  Isaiah  was  certain  that  God's 
city  could  not  perish,  but  must  remain  to  be  a  bless- 
ing to  all  nations  of  the  earth.  When  the  wreck  of 
the  soul  was  threatened,  Browning  was  certain  that 
for  man  made  in  God's  image  there  must  be  a 
power  of  recovery,  even  though  it  might  be  beyond 
the  sight  of  human  eyes. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    MEANING    OF    THE   FUTURE 

THE  future  is  a  court  to  which  the  most 
desperate  case  can  always  be  appealed. 
So  far  as  the  past  is  concerned,  there  is  no 
more  to  say.  What  I  have  written,  I  have  written. 
There  is  neither  room  for  hope,  nor  place  for  im- 
agination. But  in  the  future,  everything  is  to  be 
made.  Its  very  formlessness  gives  it  a  fascination 
that  is  all  its  own.  If  there  is  need  of  remedy,  it  is 
in  the  future  that  the  remedy  may  be  sought  and 
found.  If  present  wrong-doing  must  bring  punish- 
ment, it  is  in  the  future  that  the  punishment  will  be 
inflicted.  If  there  are  rewards  for  bravery  and 
zeal  and  patience,  it  is  in  the  future  that  the  dis- 
tribution will  be  made.  In  every  religion  it  has 
played  a  prominent  part.  The  Mohammedan  has 
his  Paradise  of  sensuous  delights,  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indian  looked  forward  to  his  happy  hunting- 
grounds,  even  the  cultivated  pagan  may  long  for 
the  "  sleep  eternal  in  an  eternal  night "  which  shall 

bring  to  an  end  the  selfishness  and  ennui  of  his  dull 
176 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE   FUTURE         177 

existence.  If  life  has  taken  away  from  him  all 
other  pleasures,  it  yet  affords  him  a  convenient 
opportunity  for  contemplating  the  joys  of  vacuous- 
ness,  which  ^san  be  tasted  only  in  anticipation. 

In  Christianity,  the  importance  of  the  future  has 
been  most  strongly  marked,  so  strongly  marked, 
indeed,  that  there  have  been  systems  of  theology  in 
which  very  little  room  has  been  left  for  anything 
else.  Heaven  and  hell  have  filled  the  canvas  so 
completely,  with  hell  predominating,  as  requiring 
more  glaring  colors,  that  men  have  lost  sight  of  the 
fact  that  God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  sent  His 
Son  into  the  world  to  take  our  nature  upon  Him, 
to  wear  the  form  of  a  servant,  to  be  found  in  fashion 
as  a  man,  and  to  teach  men  by  His  example,  not 
how  to  behave  in  hell  or  heaven,  but  how  to  live  on 
earth.  There  can  be  no  adequate  conception  of 
Christianity  which  does  not  realize  that  the  Word 
was  made  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us  on  this  earth 
of  ours,  that  Jesus  Christ  was  not  ashamed  to  call 
men  His  brethren,  not  as  they  might  be  in  some 
future  state,  but  as  they  were,  with  all  the  hindrances 
and  limitations  of  the  world  upon  them;  that  He 
knows  from  His  own  experience,  not  indeed  the 

12 


1 78  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

sin,  but  the  temptations  of  our  mortal  nature  which 
lead  to  sin  in  those  less  strong  than  He.  Chris- 
tianity, whatever  it  may  have  been  Yesterday,  or 
whatever  of  promise  or  of  warning  it  may  offer  for 
To-morrow,  speaks  always  its  word  of  greatest 
power  to  To-day.  It  is  a  Life  to  lead,  a  Friend  to 
welcome,  a  Guide  to  follow,  a  Master  to  accept. 

But,  when  all  this  is  clearly  understood,  it  yet  re- 
mains that  Christianity  has  a  firm  grasp  upon  the 
future.  Because  it  is  concerned  with  life,  it  cannot 
be  limited  to  three-score  years  and  ten,  or  four- 
score years.  Because  it  is  concerned  with  char- 
acter, its  continuance  cannot  be  dependent  upon 
the  changes  and  chances  which  belong  to  earth. 
Because  it  is  concerned  with  love,  it  knows  no  end. 
We  read  of  Christ  Himself  that  for  the  joy  that  was 
set  before  Him  He  endured  the  cross,  despising  the 
shame.  He  speaks  to  the  disciples  of  the  many 
mansions  in  His  Father's  house,  and  of  the  heavenly 
places  which  He  must  prepare  for  those  who  have 
been  close  to  Him  on  earth.  He  has  much  to  say 
of  stewardship,  and  accounting,  and  responsibility. 
When,  on  the  third  day,  He  rises  from  the  dead; 
when,  a  few  weeks  later,  He  goes  with  the  disciples 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         179 

as  far  as  Bethany,  and  while  He  yet  blesses  them 
is  parted  from  them,  and  returns  again  to  the  heaven 
from  whence  He  came;  He  opens  up  before  men's 
eyes  such  vistas  as  they  could  never  have  imagined. 
He  shows  them  that  life  is  too  great  a  gift  to  end  in 
death. 

But  this  was  seven  hundred  years  and  more  after 
Isaiah's  time.  The  Hebrew  prophets  could  only 
gaze  into  the  future  in  dim  anticipation  of  one  who 
should  come  some  day  to  save  his  people,  to  solve 
their  problems  and  to  free  them  from  their  bonds. 
The  wisest  of  them  could  have  no  such  conception  of 
personal  immortality  as  is  a  commonplace  in  Chris- 
tian days.  In  the  story  of  Hezekiah's  sickness,  we 
may  see  how  the  men  of  that  time  felt  regarding 
death.  Not  only  did  it  mean  the  destruction  of 
earthly  hopes,  but  it  was  the  blotting  out  of  every- 
thing which  made  men  what  they  were.  It  took 
from  them  all  stoutness  of  heart,  it  opened  up  be- 
fore them  a  yawning  chasm  into  which  they  were 
compelled  to  plunge,  it  separated  them  irremediably 
from  God  Himself.  "The  grave  cannot  praise  Thee, 
death  cannot  celebrate  Thse;  they  that  go  down 
into  the  pit  cannot  hope  for  Thy  truth."  It  is  true 


i8o  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

that  we  have  the  prophetic  saying,  foreshadowing 
the  New  Testament  and  repeated  there,  that  God 
will  swallow  up  death  in  victory,  and  that  He  will 
wipe  away  tears  from  off  all  faces;  but  as  we  read 
on  we  find  that  this  is  associated  with  taking  away 
the  rebuke  of  His  people  from  the  earth,  and  we 
realize  that  it  is  a  promise  to  those  who  shall  belong 
to  the  nation  in  the  day  of  its  redemption  rather 
than  to  those  who  are  now  struggling  with  their 
sins  while  the  nation  turns  its  back  on  God.  There 
is  no  subject  in  the  treatment  of  which  the  prophet 
brings  out  more  plainly  that  civic  righteousness,  not 
personal  need,  is  always  his  chief  concern. 

For  Isaiah,  then,  there  could  have  been  no  such 
conception  of  the  future  as  came,  some  centuries 
later,  to  St.  Paul.  Whatever  his  understanding  of 
the  Messiah  may  have  been,  the  Messiah's  work  was 
to  be  done  on  earth,  and  did  not  extend  to  heaven. 
If  Isaiah  could  have  heard  St.  Paul's  words  about 
the  Resurrection,  they  would  have  had  no  meaning 
for  him.  "If  Christ  be  not  risen,  then  is  our  preach- 
ing vain,  and  your  faith  is  also  vain.  If  in  this  life 
only  we  have  hope  in  Christ,  we  are  of  all  men  most 
miserable."  To  the  Corinthians  of  St.  Paul's  day, 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         181 

this  language  was  plain  enough;  but  for  Isaiah  to 
have  used  it  would  have  involved  an  entire  recon- 
struction of  his  thought.  He  was  a  man  of  God,  a 
man  of  the  widest  vision  and  the  deepest  faith.  He 
looked  for  the  Messiah,  who  should  come  to  bring 
God's  work  to  a  successful  issue.  But  that  work 
was  for  the  nation,  and  nations  do  not  go  to  heaven. 
Isaiah's  future  contains  no  such  pictures  as  those 
which  the  Book  of  Revelation  sets  before  us.  He 
sees  things  which  shall  be  hereafter,  but  there  is  no 
door  opened  that  he  may  look  into  heaven  —  that 
happens  only  when  he  first  goes  about  his  work; 
his  heavenly  vision  is  for  the  task  before  him,  not 
for  some  life  to  come.  For  him  the  future  is  filled, 
not  with  songs  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  to  God 
in  heaven,  but  with  national  triumph,  with  national 
redemption,  with  national  vindication  of  God's 
sovereignty  on  earth. 

The  prophet  looks  to  these  coming  years  with  no 
less  assurance  than  St.  Paul  looks  forward  to  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead.  God's  place  in  them  is 
just  as  inevitable  as  it  is  with  St.  Paul,  when  the  end 
shall  have  come,  and  all  things  shall  be  in  subjec- 
tion under  His  feet.  There  is  the  same  theatre,  but 


1 82  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

a  new  interpretation  has  been  given  to  life.  We 
have  seen  how  the  sins  of  his  people  lay  heavily 
upon  the  prophet's  heart  and  conscience,  how  loudly 
he  repeated  his  threats  of  the  punishment  that  must 
surely  follow,  how  eagerly  he  insisted  upon  a  rem- 
nant which  should  justify  God's  ancient  choice  of 
this  people  for  His  own.  When  the  present  has  the 
very  least  to  offer,  Isaiah  sees  in  the  future  God's 
opportunity  and  God's  right.  From  the  year  when 
King  Uzziah  died,  from  the  day  when  there  came 
to  him  the  dazzling  vision  of  God's  work  and  of 
God's  need,  God  has  been  always  at  the  centre  of 
his  thought.  If  the  misdoings  of  his  people  have 
compelled  him  now  and  again  to  turn  from  God's 
splendor  to  man's  weakness,  it  has  been  of  hard 
necessity,  and  not  of  choice.  But  the  future  is  an 
open  page,  unstained  as  yet.  Though  God  must 
surely  punish  for  man's  sin,  just  as  surely  would  He 
have  man  turn  from  his  wickedness,  and  live.  And 
so  the  future  upon  which  Isaiah  loves  to  dwell  is  not 
the  day  of  reckoning,  though  that  must  have  its 
place,  but  the  day  of  recognition  and  return;  the 
day  when  men  shall  know  the  purpose  of  their  life, 
and  the  dignity  of  their  calling,  and  the  closeness  of 
their  fellowship  with  God. 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         183 

From  the  beginning  of  Isaiah's  prophesying  to 
the  end,  this  note  is  always  sounding.  "Though 
your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white  as 
snow ;  though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be 
as  wool."  Here  we  have  the  fact  of  the  present,  and 
the  possibility  of  the  future,  brought  into  sharpest 
contrast  and  set  side  by  side.  However  dismal  the 
state  of  affairs  may  be  which  prevails  in  Jerusalem, 
the  time  shall  come  when  it  shall  be  called  The  city 
of  righteousness,  The  faithful  city,  and  when  it  shall 
deserve  the  name.  The  nations  shall  come  to  it, 
that  they  may  learn  the  ways  of  quietness  and  peace. 
It  shall  stand  as  a  tabernacle  for  a  shadow  in  the 
daytime  from  the  heat,  and  for  a  place  of  refuge,  and 
for  a  covert  from  storm  and  from  rain.  This  glorious 
future  is  so  real  to  the  prophet  that,  with  something 
perhaps  of  the  confusion  of  Hebrew  tenses,  but  with 
even  more  of  the  tendency  of  human  nature  to  make 
one's  own  what  is  eagerly  desired,  he  can  speak  of 
it  as  if  it  had  already  come.  The  people  that  walked 
in  darkness  "have  seen"  a  great  light,  though  it  has 
not  yet  shined  upon  them;  but  Isaiah  projects  him- 
self into  the  future  and  looks  back,  and  so  describes 
what  he  is  sure  must  happen  as  if  it  were  already 


184  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

come  to  pass.  The  spirit  of  peace  extends  even  to 
the  brute  creation.  The  wolf  and  the  lamb,  the 
leopard  and  the  kid,  the  calf  and  the  young  lion, 
forget  their  ancient  enmity,  and  dwell  together.  On 
the  one  side  there  is  no  more  ferocity,  on  the  other 
side  there  is  no  more  fear.  The  knowledge  of  the 
Lord  will  drive  strife  and  discord  and  contention 
from  the  earth. 

So  full  of  promise  is  the  future  for  those  who  can 
realize  that  it  belongs  to  God,  and  who  are  content 
to  leave  it  in  His  hands.  It  needs  no  new  environ- 
ment, for  it  fills  the  old  environment  with  a  new 
glory.  "Though  the  Lord  give  you  the  bread  of 
adversity,  and  the  water  of  affliction,  yet  shall  not 
thy  teachers  be  removed  into  a  corner  any  more, 
but  thine  eyes  shall  see  thy  teachers;  and  thine  ears 
shall  hear  a  word  behind  thee,  saying,  This  is  the 
way,  walk  ye  in  it,  when  ye  turn  to  the  right  hand, 
and  when  ye  turn  to  the  left."  For  ignorance  there 
shall  be  knowledge,  for  darkness  there  shall  be  light. 
"The  light  of  the  moon  shall  be  as  the  light  of  the 
sun,  and  the  light  of  the  sun  shall  be  sevenfold,  as 
the  light  of  seven  days,  in  the  day  that  the  Lord 
bindeth  up  the  breach  of  His  people,  and  healeth 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         185 

the  stroke  of  their  wound."  Even  where  punish- 
ment cannot  be  averted,  there  is  a  clear  recognition 
by  the  prophet  that  it  cannot  be  the  final  goal  which 
God  would  reach.  He  has  been  speaking,  with  even 
more  than  his  usual  vehemence,  of  the  certainty  of 
the  destruction  that  must  come  upon  persistent  sin. 
He  holds  up  as  it  were  a  mirror  before  the  people  of 
Jerusalem,  and  bids  them  look  to  the  crown  of 
pride,  the  drunkards  of  Ephraim,  and  there  see  their 
own  selfishness  and  their  own  danger.  The  beauty 
of  the  valley  shall  be  a  fading  flower,  and  as  the 
hasty  fruit  that  dries  and  withers  under  the  summer 
sun;  but  it  is  impossible  that  this  was  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  created.  Close  upon  his  words  of 
threatening  and  rebuke,  Isaiah  speaks  a  parable. 
Why  does  the  ploughman  plough  all  day  but  that 
he  may  be  able,  in  good  time,  to  sow  his  seed  ?  Why 
does  he  break  the  clods  of  earth  upon  his  ground 
but  that  the  seed  may  have  a  chance  to  germinate? 
He  threshes  the  ripe  grain,  but  he  is  not  always 
threshing.  The  chaff  must  be  separated  from  the 
wheat,  but  when  that  has  been  accomplished  there 
is  an  end  of  such  rough  measures.  And  this  is  but 
a  figure  of  the  way  in  which  God  works.  What- 


i86  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

ever  may  have  happened  in  the  past,  God  gives 
men  the  future  that  they  may  fill  it  with  divine  per- 
formance, and  give  it  back  to  Him.  "The  ransomed 
of  the  Lord  shall  return,  and  come  to  Zion  with  songs 
and  everlasting  joy  upon  their  heads;  they  shall 
obtain  joy  and  gladness,  and  sorrow  and  sighing 
shall  flee  away."  It  may  be  that  these  words  come 
from  a  later  time  than  that  in  which  Isaiah  lived, 
but  at  any  rate  they  are  filled  with  Isaiah's  spirit. 
They  show  us  what  was  his  vision  of  the  future, 
and  give  us  his  conception  of  its  meaning. 

The  vision  which  came  to  Browning  was  very 
much  of  the  same  sort.  Because  he  was  a  poet  and 
not  a  prophet,  because  he  was  an  Englishman  and 
not  a  Hebrew,  because,  instead  of  looking  forward 
to  the  Messiah,  he  could  look  back  to  Christ,  there 
was  of  course  a  divergence  from  Isaiah  in  his  under- 
standing of  the  things  for  which  the  future  stood. 
For  him,  it  was  not  an  opportunity  for  God's  chosen 
people  to  enter  into  their  inheritance  upon  the  earth, 
but  it  was  an  opportunity  for  men  and  women  to 
complete  their  development  under  new  conditions, 
and  with  fuller  light,  whether  in  earth  or  heaven. 
With  Browning,  as  with  Isaiah,  there  is  not  much 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         187 

thought  of  the  future  as  a  time  when  punishment 
must  be  inflicted  for  evil  that  has  been  done.  This 
is  an  aspect  of  4t  which  is  not  denied,  but  which  is 
taken  for  granted  and  dismissed  without  further 
notice,  as  something  which  does  not  require  argu- 
ment nor  explanation.  For  the  unjust  to  recognize 
the  hatefulness  of  his  injustice,  for  the  filthy  to 
realize  that  he  is  wallowing  in  filth,  there  must  be 
something  more  than  the  mere  lapse  of  time.  Though 
century  were  to  be  piled  on  century,  and  aeon  upon 
aeon,  it  would  not  be  enough  to  awaken  the  sinner 
to  his  sin,  much  less  to  convince  him  of  his  fault. 
There  must  be  something  else  for  that,  and  some- 
thing which  lies  beyond  man's  power.  As  the  Pope 
considers  Guido's  case,  Guido's  brother,  the  Abbot 
Paul,  comes  within  his  range  of  view.  This  is  not 
the  man  upon  whom  he  is  called  to  sit  in  judgment. 
There  are  not  many  things  to  say  about  him,  but  it 
is  not  often  that  so  much  has  been  said  in  such  short 
compass. 

"This  fox-faced  horrible  priest,  this  brother-brute 
The  Abate,  —  why,  mere  wolfishness  looks  well, 
Guido  stands  honest  in  the  red  o'  the  flame, 
Beside  this  yellow  that  would  pass  for  white, 


i88  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Twice  Guido,  all  craft  but  no  violence, 
This  copier  of  the  mien  and  gait  and  garb 
Of  Peter  and  Paul,  that  he  may  go  disguised, 
Rob  halt  and  lame,  sick  folk  i'  the  temple-porch  I 
Armed  with  religion,  fortified  by  law, 
A  man  of  peace,  who  trims  the  midnight  lamp 
And  turns  the  classic  page —  and  all  for  craft, 
All  to  work  harm  with,  yet  incur  no  scratch ! 
While  Guido  brings  the  struggle  to  a  close, 
Paul  steps  back  the  due  distance,  clear  o'  the  trap 
He  builds  and  baits.     Guido  I  catch  and  judge; 
Paul  is  past  reach  in  this  world  and  my  time: 
That  is  a  case  reserved." 

There  are  many  times  when  it  seems  as  if  the  Pope, 
while  he  speaks  for  himself  on  the  matter  which  is 
immediately  before  him,  were  speaking  for  Browning, 
too,  on  the  whole  subject  which  the  special  case  sug- 
gests. Here,  at  any  rate,  he  shows  that  there  are 
questions  regarding  the  future  which  lie  beyond  his 
province  and  the  poet's;  and  he  marks  out  the 
limitations  within  which  we  must  expect  the  subject 
to  be  treated. 

And  indeed,  with  Browning,  the  future  always 
stands  for  hope,  and  cheer,  and  promise.  It  gives 
him  a  free  field  for  that  invincible  optimism  of  his, 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         189 

which  might  come  to  grief  if  it  were  compelled  to 
look  too  uninterruptedly  at  the  shame  and  evil  of 
this  present  world.  The  last  calamity  that  could  be 
associated  with  it\ would  be  that  it  should  be  forever 
fixed  and  changeless.  In  one  of  his  latest  poems,  he 
tells  the  story  of  a  native  of  the  star  Rephan,  where 
all  things  are  forever  at  their  best.  There  was  no 
want  there;  for  whatever  should  be,  they  already 
have.  There  was  no  growth  nor  change,  for  where 
perfection  is  found  made  to  order  growth  must  be 
superfluous,  and  change  could  only  mean  deteriora- 
tion. There  was  nothing  worse  nor  better;  in  that 
uniform  universe  there  could  be  no  standards  of 
comparison  of  any  sort. 

"Can  your  world's  phrase,  your  sense  of  things 
Forth-figure  the  Star  of  my  God?     No  springs, 
No  winters  throughout  its  space.     Time  brings 

"No  hope,  no  fear;  as  to-day  shall  be 
To-morrow;  advance  or  retreat  need  we 
At  our  stand-still  through  eternity? 

"All  happy:  needs  must  we  so  have  been, 
Since  who  could  be  otherwise?  All  serene. 
What  dark  was  to  banish,  what  light  to  screen?" 


190  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

The  man  from  Rephan,  who  has  come  to  earth, 
looks  into  the  faces  of  those  to  whom  he  tells  his  tale. 
They  are  worn  and  weak  and  furrowed,  some  with 
the  weight  of  years,  and  some  old  before  their  time 
with  care  and  worry.  They  are  diseased  in  body, 
and  sick  in  soul,  and  pinched  by  poverty,  or  satiated 
with  wealth.  But  he  has  chosen  to  cast  in  his  lot 
with  theirs.  That  faultless  exactness  of  Rephan  has 
palled  upon  him.  That  endless  repetition  of  per- 
fection must  kill  all  fellowship,  and  sympathy,  and 
aspiration.  Somehow  —  he  thinks  it  could  only 
be  from  God  Himself  —  his  soul's  quietude  awak- 
ened into  discontent.  There  must  be  something 
more  for  him  than  this  merging  in  a  neutral  best  of 
weak  and  strong,  and  right  and  wrong,  and  wise  and 
foolish.  It  is  not  sameness  that  he  wants,  but  differ- 
ence. His  own  smug  perfectness  is  tawdry  and 
second-rate.  There  must  be  an  Infinite  above  and 
below  him  to  attract  his  flight  and  to  repel  his 
falling. 

"Enough:  for  you  doubt,  you  hope,  O  men, 
You  fear,  you  agonize,  die:  what  then? 
Is  an  end  to  your  life's  work  out  of  ken? 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         191 

"Have  you  no  assurance  that,  earth  at  end, 
Wrong  will  prove  right?   Who  made  shall  mend 
In  the  higher  sphere  to  which  yearnings  tend? 

"Why  should  I  speak?     You  divine  the  test. 
When  the  trouble  grew  in  my  pregnant  breast, 
A  voice  said,  'So  would'st  thou  strive,  not  rest? 

"'Burn  and  not  smoulder,  win  by  worth, 
Not  rest  content  with  a  wealth  that's  dearth? 
Thou  art  past  Rephan,  thy  place  be  earth ! ' " 

Rephan  stood,  not  for  attainment,  for  there  can  be 
no  attainment  where  there  has  been  no  effort,  nor 
for  fulfilment,  for  there  was  nothing  unfinished  to 
fulfil,  but  for  repletion,  and  the  absence  of  oppor- 
tunity, and  the  blotting  out  of  any  future.  But  it 
is  the  possibility  of  renewal,  and  recovery,  and  ac- 
complishment, and  triumph,  that  the  future  offers, 
which  makes  the  silver  lining  to  earth's  darkest 
cloud. 

A  future  which  is  so  full  of  significance  must  have 
room.  It  must  reach  on  where  men's  eyes  cannot 
follow,  and  it  must  suggest  what  men's  imaginations 
cannot  picture.  Cleon,  the  pagan  poet,  recognizes 
this,  even  while  he  dismisses  Paul  and  Christ  with  a 


i92  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

contemptuous  sneer,  as  those  whose  doctrine  could  be 
held  by  no  sane  man.  But  the  lust  of  living  grows 
in  him  as  he  contemplates  the  certainty  of  death. 
The  time  has  come  when  he  must  give  things  up, 
but  even  as  he  is  forced  to  give  them  up  he  finds 
he  wants  them  more  than  ever. 

"Every  day  my  sense  of  joy 
Grows  more  acute,  my  soul  (intensified 
By  power  and  insight)  more  enlarged,  more  keen: 
While  every  day  my  hairs  fall  more  and  more, 
My  hand  shakes,  and  the  heavy  years  increase." 

It  is  an  anti-climax  to  which  he  cannot  reconcile 
himself,  that  as  he  gains  in  knowledge  he  must  lose 
the  power  of  enjoyment,  and  that  he,  who  is  now  a 
thinking,  feeling,  acting  man,  must  be  separated 
from  the  vigor  and  reality  of  life,  and  sleep  in  an 
urn.  The  thought  is  an  intolerable  one. 

"It  is  so  horrible, 

I  dare  at  times  imagine  to  my  need 
Some  future  state  revealed  to  us  by  Zeus, 
Unlimited  in  capability 
For  joy,  as  this  is  in  desire  for  joy, 
— To  seek  which,  the  joy-hunger  forces  us." 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         193 

His  heathen  philosophy  affords  no  ground  for  his 
imagination,  so,  most  reluctantly,  he  dismisses  it  as 
something  which  cannot  be.  But  his  very  yearning 
for  it  shows  how  closely  the  thought  of  the  future 
touches  the  soul  of  man. 

What,  to  Cleon,  could  be  no  more  than  a  shadowy 
and  unsubstantial  dream,  takes  shape  with  Paracel- 
sus, in  another  age  and  under  new  conditions.  To 
the  German  student,  as  to  the  Greek  poet,  there 
comes  a  passion  for  the  richness  and  fulness  of  life 
which  cannot  be  satisfied  with  renunciation.  There 
was  a  time  when  Einsiedeln  and  its  green  hills  were 
all  the  world  to  him.  That  time  goes  by,  and  he 
sets  out  upon  his  quest  for  knowledge.  What  was 
a  speck  expands  into  a  star.  Life  is  an  adventure, 
a  search,  a  progress.  But  at  the  beginning,  Para- 
celsus can  forecast  the  end. 

"I  go  to  prove  my  soul ! 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way. 
I  shall  arrive !  what  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not ;  but  unless  God  send  His  hail 
Or  blinding  fireballs,  sleet  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  His  good  time,  I  shall  arrive: 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird.    In  His  good  time  1 " 
13 


194  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

This  faith  of  his  gives  him  patience,  and  strength, 
and  courage.  It  carries  him  through  failure,  and 
the  kind  of  failure  which  comes  from  within,  and 
breaks  the  heart,  as  well  as  that  which  comes  from 
without,  and  only  tries  the  temper.  It  helps  him  to 
an  understanding  of  the  world,  and  to  a  recognition 
of  his  own  insufficiency  and  incompleteness.  It  is 
man  who  is  the  consummation  of  God's  scheme  of 
being,  the  heir  of  hopes  too  fair  to  turn  out  false, 
and  in  whom,  when  he  is  known  as  man,  there  be- 
gins anew  a  tendency  to  God.  And  at  the  end  Para- 
celsus, though  he  takes  into  full  account  all  in  which 
he  has  fallen  short  on  earth,  can  still  trust  the 
future. 

"If  I  stoop 

Into  a  dark  tremendous  sea  of  cloud, 
It  is  but  for  a  time;  I  press  God's  lamp 
Close  to  my  breast ;  its  splendor,  soon  or  late, 
Will  pierce  the  gloom ;  I  shall  emerge  one  day." 

If  he  succeeds,  there  is  so  much  still  to  do  that  the 
consciousness  of  success  can  never  make  him  idle; 
and  if  he  fails,  the  consciousness  of  failure  is  power- 
less to  rob  him  of  his  hope. 

It  is  just  because  the  future  means  so  much  to 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         195 

Browning  that  he  so  often  carries  it  over  into  another 
world.  This  world,  as  it  seemed  to  Cleon,  is  too 
small.  And  about  that  other  world  there  is  a  solem- 
nity and  dignity  tha^  is  all  its  own,  apart  from  what- 
ever terms  on  which  one  enters.  A  man  has  died 
on  the  field  of  honor,  shot  for  a  deed  of  dishonor  that 
he  has  done.  A  moment  ago,  he  was  an  offence  to 
earth  —  but  now : 

"How  he  lies  in  his  rights  of  a  man! 

Death  has  done  all  death  can. 
And,  absorbed  in  the  new  life  he  leads, 

He  recks  not,  he  heeds 
Nor  his  wrong  nor  my  vengeance;  both  strike 

On  his  senses  alike, 
And  are  lost  in  the  solemn  and  strange 

Surprise  of  the  change." 

The  bearing  of  the  penalty  is  the  first  step  toward 
better  things,  and  the  new  life  may  help  to  remedy 
the  old.  In  a  very  different  way,  "Evelyn  Hope" 
suggests  the  power  of  that  new  life  in  clearing  up 
what  this  life  was  not  able  to  reveal. 

"Sixteen  years  old  when  she  died! 

Perhaps  she  had  scarcely  heard  my  name; 
It  was  not  her  time  to  love;  beside, 
Her  life  had  many  a  hope  and  aim, 


196  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Duties  enough  and  little  cares, 

And  now  was  quiet,  now  astir, 
Till  God's  hand  beckoned  unawares,  — 

And  the  sweet  white  brow  is  all  of  her." 

But  the  man  who  had  loved  her,  and  never  told  his 
love,  could  not  believe  that  all  was  over  before  it 
was  begun.  It  might  be  that  there  was  much  to 
learn,  much  to  forget,  before  his  time  should  come, 
but  that  it  must  come  some  day  he  was  certain.  And 
he  trusts  the  future,  though  the  present  is  full  of 
obscurity  and  doubt. 

"So,  hush —  I  will  give  you  this  leaf  to  keep; 

See,  I  shut  it  inside  the  sweet  cold  hand. 
There,  that  is  our  secret :  go  to  sleep ! 
You  will  wake,  and  remember,  and  understand." 

The  future  is  so  full  of  possibility  and  power  that 
it  imparts  to  the  present  something  of  its  own  sig- 
nificance. What  leads  to  so  much  must  be  itself 
worth  while.  The  poet  looks  at  the  old  pictures  in 
Florence  and  wonders  at  their  beauty.  He  com- 
pares the  Greek  statues  which  he  sees  about  him 
with  the  men  and  women  of  his  acquaintance.  Not 
one  of  them  has  Theseus'  kingliness,  or  Hector's 
grace,  or  Apollo's  beauty,  or  Niobe's  sublime  despair. 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         197 

The  marble  strength  brings  out  the  human  weakness, 
the  marble  beauty  emphasizes  the  meagre  charms 
of  flesh  and  blood.  But  there  is  this  great  difference, 
a  difference  beside  which  all  other  differences  be- 
come as  nothing. 

"To-day's  brief  passion  limits  their  range; 

It  seethes  with  the  morrow  for  us  and  more. 
They  are  perfect —  how  else?     They  shall  never  change: 

We  are  faulty —  why  not?     We  have  time  in  store. 
The  Artificer's  hand  is  not  arrested 

With  us;  we  are  rough-hewn,  nowise  polished: 
They  stand  for  our  copy,  and,  once  invested 

With  all  they  can  teach,  we  shall  see  them  abolished." 

So,  as  in  Rephan,  their  very  perfection  becomes  the 
sign  of  imperfection,  and  counts  for  so  little  just 
because  it  is  so  great.  It  must  be  always  the  blot 
upon  perfectness  that  it  can  go  no  farther.  But 
wherever  there  can  be  progress  there  is  life.  This 
is  Abt  Vogler's  assurance,  which  brings  with  it  the 
added  assurance  that  what  is  worth  the  keeping 
cannot  be  destroyed. 

"There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good!  What  was,  shall  live  as 

before; 
The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound; 


198  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

What  was  good,  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good 

more; 

On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven,  a  perfect 
round. 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good,  shall  exist; 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself;    no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor 

power 

Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melo- 
dist 

When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 
The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too 

hard, 

The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky, 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard; 
Enough  that  He  heard  it  once;  we  shall  hear  it  by  and 
by." 

And  so  he  plays  upon  his  organ,  and  prolongs  the 
pauses  that  there  may  be  place  for  singing,  and  does 
not  shun  the  discords  that  will  make  harmony  more 
highly  prized.  Then  the  music  ceases.  It  is  earth 
with  him,  and  the  reign  of  silence  resumes  its  sway. 
But  what  has  been  is  presage  of  what  must  be,  and 
he  is  content. 

We  have  already  glanced  at  the  old  Grammarian, 
who  is  one  of  Browning's  most  characteristic  figures. 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE         igg 

For  the  present  moment  he  has  the  profound  con- 
tempt, not  of  the  prodigal  who  wastes  it,  but  of  the 
man  who  has  a  million  such  in  store.  Its  worth  lies 
not  in  what  it  is  but  in  what  it  may  become.  The 
future  is  the  only  explanation  of  his  life,  but  with 
that  explanation  — 

"Was  it  not  great?   Did  not  he  throw  on  God, 

(He  loves  the  burthen)  — 
God's  task  to  make  the  heavenly  period 

Perfect  the  earthen? 
Did  not  he  magnify  the  mind,  show  clear 

Just  what  it  all  meant? 
He  would  not  discount  life,  as  fools  do  here, 

Paid  by  instalment." 

In  a  way,  it  was  the  paradox  of  Christianity,  though 
it  was  worked  out  along  scholastic  lines.  He  saved 
his  life  because  he  was  so  ready  to  lose  it.  The 
moment  counted  for  so  little  because  the  whole 
scheme  counted  for  so  much. 

But  it  is  in  "Easter  Day"  that  Browning's  thought 
of  the  future  gains  its  climax.  And  here,  as  with 
Isaiah,  though  it  comes  in  vision  in  which  this  world 
and  the  next  are  mingled,  the  future  of  which  the 
poet  chiefly  speaks  is  that  which  comes  to-morrow, 


200  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

rather  than  that  which  stretches  away  in  some  new 
life.  He  knows  that  there  are  earthly  limitations  in 
plenty.  They  are  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for, 
the  evidence  of  things  as  yet  not  seen,  and  so  there 
is  a  dignity  about  them  which  helps  to  strip  them  of 
their  harshness.  That  man  should  feel  them  is  a 
sign  that  he  may  overcome  them.  But  woe  to  those 
who  accept  the  limitations  as  eternal,  who  take  the 
part  for  the  whole,  the  incomplete  for  the  finished, 
the  beginning  for  the  end.  They  have  their  reward, 
but  what  a  reward  it  is !  This  is  what  the  poet  sets 
forth  in  "Easter  Day."  Faith  has  been  too  hard. 
The  invisible  seemed  too  far  away  and  shadowy  to 
be  much  considered. 

"This  world, 

This  finite  life,  thou  hast  preferred, 
In  disbelief  of  God's  own  word, 
To  heaven  and  to  infinity." 

Then,  in  the  vision  of  judgment,  we  have  what  fol- 
lows. That  will  not  be  thrust  upon  him  for  which 
he  has  never  cared.  He  will  not  find  what  he  has  not 
looked  for. 

"Thou  art  shut 
Out  of  the  heaven  of  spirit." 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE        201 

But  he  shall  have  what  he  has  desired,  he  shall  gain 
what  he  has  sought. 

"Glut 

Thy  sense  upon  the  world ;  't  is  thine 
Forever;  take  it!" 

Is  this  judgment?  Is  the  Divine  bounty  so  free,  so 
open-handed  ? 

"How?  Is  mine, 

The  world?  (I  cried,  while  my  soul  broke 
Out  in  a  transport.)   Hast  thou  spoke 
Plainly  in  that?   Earth's  exquisite 
Treasures  of  wonder  and  delight 
For  me?" 

Yes,  it  was  all  true.  There  was  no  reservation  or 
condition.  Nothing  should  be  withheld,  except 
what  he  had  voluntarily  ignored. 

"Take  all  the  ancient  show! 
The  woods  shall  wave,  the  rivers  flow, 
And  men  apparently  pursue 
Their  works,  as  they  were  wont  to  do, 
While  living  in  probation  yet. 
I  promise  not  thou  shalt  forget 
The  past,  now  gone  to  its  account; 
But  leave  thee  with  the  old  amount 


202  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Of  faculties,  nor  less  nor  more, 

Unvisited,  as  heretofore, 

By  God's  free  spirit,  that  makes  an  end. 

So,  once  more,  take  thy  world!   Expend 

Eternity  upon  its  shows, 

Flung  thee  as  freely  as  one  rose 

Out  of  a  summer's  opulence, 

Over  the  Eden-barrier  whence 

Thou  art  excluded.     Knock  in  vain!" 

But  to  one  who  had  so  much  in  possession,  what 
mattered  exclusion  from  what  he  had  not  cared  for, 
after  all  ?  He  would  do  so  much,  he  would  range  so 
far,  he  would  fill  himself  so  full  of  joy  and  of  ac- 
complishment. But  while  he  yet  unfolds  his  plans, 
while  he  is  yet  rejoicing  over  the  richness  that  is  to 
be  his,  the  voice  of  judgment  speaks  another  word. 

"All  partial  beauty  was  a  pledge 
Of  beauty  in  its  plenitude; 
But  since  the  pledge  sufficed  thy  mood, 
Retain  it!    Plenitude  be  theirs 
Who  looked  above ! " 

The  world  with  all  its  joy  and  achievement  —  that 
world  which  he  is  still  to  have  —  was  but  the  need- 
ful furniture  for  life's  first  stage.  The  very  love  to 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE        203 

which  he  turns  to  wrest  escape  from  the  hideous 
completeness  that  he  has  purchased  for  himself  was 
all  around  him  in  the  world,  though  he  did  not  see  it, 
when  he  made  his  wretched  choice.  And  so  he 
flings  away  his  hopeless  riches,  his  painful  joy,  his 
ignominious  contentment.  He  is  a  man,  and  not  a 
thing. 

"I  cowered  deprecatingly  — 
'Thou  Love  of  God!    Or  let  me  die, 
Or  grant  what  shall  seem  heaven  almost! 
Let  me  not  know  that  all  is  lost, 
Though  lost  it  be —  leave  me  not  tied 
To  this  despair,  this  corpse-like  bride! 
Let  that  old  life  seem  mine —  no  more — 
With  limitation  as  before, 
With  darkness,  hunger,  toil,  distress; 
Be  all  the  earth  a  wilderness! 
Only  let  me  go  on,  go  on, 
Still  hoping  ever  and  anon, 
To  reach  one  eve  the  Better  Land!'" 

And  when  the  vision  leaves  him,  he  sees  life  with 
other  eyes  than  he  had  ever  done  before.  He  is  not 
looking  for  earth  to  be  heaven.  Heaven  is  still  to 
gain.  The  enjoyment  of  uninterrupted  ease  would 
not  be  peace,  but  sluggishness.  Never  to  be  called 


204  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

on  to  choose,  never  to  be  called  on  to  suffer,  never 
to  be  called  on  to  submit,  would  mark  with  dull 
completeness  what  it  is  his  joy  to  know  still  to  be 
incomplete.  He  not  only  accepts  earth's  limitations, 
he  welcomes  them. 

"And  so  I  live,  you  see, 
Go  through  the  world,  try,  prove,  reject, 
Prefer,  still  struggling  to  effect 
My  warfare;  happy  that  I  can 
Be  crossed  and  thwarted  as  a  man, 
Not  left  in  God's  contempt  apart, 
With  ghastly  smooth  life,  dead  at  heart, 
Tame  in  earth's  paddock  as  her  prize." 

God  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  men's  nostrils 
for  higher  purposes  than  that  they  should  browse 
at  will  in  full-fed  vacancy. 

It  is  not  strange  that  a  man  in  whose  thought  the 
future  occupied  so  prominent  a  place  should  have  a 
personal  word  to  say  about  it,  and  Browning's  last 
poem  is  on  just  this  subject.  Do  men  —  he  calls 
them  fools  —  think  that  death  means  imprison- 
ment? Will  they  pity  him  when  they  hear  that  he 
is  dead?  He  asks  no  pity,  he  looks  forward  to  no 
such  state.  For  who  was  he,  and  what  ? 


THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FUTURE        205 

"One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break; 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would 

triumph, 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 

Then  there  need  be  no  uncertainty  about  what  was 
before  him. 

"No,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer! 

Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
*  Strive  and  thrive ! '  cry  '  Speed,  —  fight  on,  fare  ever 
There  as  here!'" 

Across  the  centuries,  the  poet  joins  issue  with  the 
prophet,  and  declares  that  the  future  sanctifies  the 
present,  and  that  so  the  present  should  consecrate 
the  future,  and  make  it  sure. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE    FORCE    OF    PERSONALITY 

THERE  is  nothing  in  the  world  more  power- 
ful, and  at  the  same  time  more  mysterious, 
than  Personality.  No  work  can  be  done  with- 
out a  worker,  but  the  worker  is  vastly  more  im- 
portant than  the  work.  This  force  of  personality 
is  present  in  the  largest  and  in  the  smallest  affairs 
of  life.  What  was  the  Incarnation  but  the  person- 
ality of  God  as  it  revealed  itself  to  men  ?  The  Word 
was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God,  and  the  Word 
was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us.  The  Son  of 
God  was  found  in  fashion  as  a  man.  He  had  His 
friends,  and  did  His  work,  and  lived  the  life  of  God 
on  earth.  Ideas  are  ghosts.  It  takes  living  and 
breathing  men  to  deal  with  men.  And  so  we  have 
that  strange,  unmapped  region  which  is  at  once  so 
bright  and  so  dim.  We  can  tell  very  well  what 
things  are,  but  we  cannot  tell  why  they  are.  The 
poet  disliked  Dr.  Fell.  He  could  not  give  the  reason, 
but  he  was  absolutely  certain  of  the  fact.  If  he  had 
liked  Dr.  Fell,  it  would  have  been  just  as  hard  to 

206 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY           207 

give  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  his  feeling.  We 
admire  virtue,  but  we  must  all  confess  that  there  are 
virtuous  persons  whom  we  cannot  tolerate.  We 
would  go  half  a  mile  out  of  our  way  rather  than 
have  two  minutes'  conversation  with  them  on  high 
subjects.  We  admire  dignitaries,  and  speak  no  evil 
of  them.  But  we  would  rather  stay  at  home  forever 
than  travel  with  certain  dignitaries,  of  the  best 
reputation  in  this  world,  and  of  whose  heavenly 
calling  there  could  be  no  doubt  whatever.  We  ad- 
mire scholarship,  but  scholarship  does  not  bind 
heart  to  heart.  Information  often  becomes  tire- 
some. Back  of  the  virtue  there  must  be  something 
more  than  virtue,  back  of  the  dignity  there  must  be 
something  more  than  dignity,  back  of  the  knowledge 
there  must  be  something  more  than  knowledge, 
which  shall  redeem  them  from  the  dulness  of  mere 
attributes  and  give  them  vital  force. 

The  prophets  were  well  aware  of  this,  when  they 
gazed  into  the  future,  and  pictured  not  only  the 
regeneration  which  they  trusted  should  one  day  come 
upon  the  state,  but  the  Messiah  by  means  of  whom 
the  regeneration  should  be  possible.  There  was 
Something  to  be  done;  but,  more  than  that,  there 


2o8  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

was  Some  One  who  could  do  it.  Side  by  side  with 
Isaiah's  passionate  desire  for  a  righteous  nation,  we 
find  his  longing  for  a  righteous  man.  He  looked  at 
Jerusalem,  and  saw  what  it  was  with  Ahaz  king  — 
a  glorious  jewel  worn  by  a  grinning  fool.  Then, 
with  that  spiritual  imagination  of  his  which  thick 
darkness  was  powerless  to  destroy,  he  saw  it  as  it 
might  be,  and  as  it  ought  to  be.  A  king  should  reign 
in  righteousness;  a  king  who  should  be  equal  to  his 
task.  The  rioting  and  drunkenness,  the  gorgeous 
clothes  that  covered  rottenness,  the  days  of  the 
city's  shame  and  degradation  —  these  should  have  an 
end.  As  Isaiah  looks  forward  to  the  time  of  deliver- 
ance, and  to  the  messenger  by  whom  the  deliverance 
should  come,  we  cannot  say  whether  the  qualities 
of  man  or  God  predominate.  The  Deliverer  —  the 
Saviour,  as  we  have  learned  to  call  Him  —  should  be 
one  of  themselves,  born  in  their  land,  tied  to  them 
by  the  ties  of  kinship;  one  whom  they  had  known, 
and  watched  over,  and  helped  in  his  days  of  helpless- 
ness, and  loved  as  only  little  children  can  be  loved. 
But  he  must  be  one  with  every  royal  attribute,  wise, 
and  powerful,  and  able  to  rule  his  land.  And  so, 
from  the  court  of  Ahaz,  which  was  everything  that  it 


20Q 

ought  not  to  be,  there  comes  Isaiah's  picture  of  the 
future  ruler  of  the  state.  Well  might  such  an  one  be 
called  Immanuel,  God  with  us.  "Unto  us  a  Child 
is  born,  unto  us  a  Son  is  given ;  and  the  government 
shall  be  upon  his  shoulder;  and  his  name  shall  be 
called  Wonderful,  Counsellor,  The  Mighty  God, 
The  Everlasting  Father,  The  Prince  of  Peace." 

This  figure  comes  and  goes  before  Isaiah's  vision. 
Sometimes  we  hear  nothing  of  him  for  long  periods, 
and  then  a  sudden  glimpse  is  given,  which  reveals 
his  character,  or  reminds  men  of  the  work  which  he 
will  have  to  do.  He  is  of  the  family  of  David,  a  rod 
out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse,  a  gathering  place  not  only 
for  the  outcasts  of  Israel  and  the  dispersed  of  Judah, 
but  for  the  Gentiles  also.  Just  as  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment St.  Paul  can  speak  of  Christ  as  one  who  breaks 
down  the  middle  wall  of  partition  between  man  and 
man,  and  who  reconciles  all  difference  through  His 
own  love,  so  does  the  prophet  speak  of  this  Messiah 
in  whom  he  trusts.  To  a  vexed  and  troubled  earth 
he  brings  the  spirit  of  the  Lord,  the  spirit  of  wisdom 
and  understanding,  of  counsel  and  might,  of  knowl- 
edge and  of  the  fear  of  the  Lord.  Where  he  goes, 
the  ancient  strifes  are  at  an  end,  and  the  world  is 

14 


2io  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

new.  Though  he  smites  with  the  rod  of  his  mouth, 
and  slays  the  wicked  with  the  breath  of  his  lips, 
righteousness  and  faithfulness  are  the  qualities  by 
which  he  rules. 

At  another  time,  the  Messiah  is  pictured  simply 
as  a  man,  and  we  see  that  in  the  prophet's  mind  there 
are  no  limits  to  what  a  man  can  do.  He  shall  be  as 
an  hiding-place  from  the  wind  and  a  covert  from  the 
tempest,  as  rivers  of  water  in  a  dry  place,  as  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.  Here  we 
have  the  force  of  personality  gathered  up,  and  ex- 
pressed within  a  single  sentence.  It  means  sym- 
pathy, the  making  of  troubles  easier  and  burdens 
lighter.  It  means  fellowship,  the  putting  to  flight  of 
loneliness,  the  bringing  in  of  another's  power  and 
of  another's  help.  It  means  strength,  not  from 
within  but  from  without,  the  strength  through  which 
one's  own  strength  grows.  It  means  refreshment, 
the  ability  to  turn  away  from  that  which  dries  and 
withers,  and  to  make  a  fresh  start  with  new  life  and 
with  new  hope.  It  means  affection,  that  giving  of 
one's  self  which  we  are  taught  is  the  chief  attribute 
of  God,  that  fostering  care  with  which  the  father  pro- 
tects his  children,  and  the  mother  watches  over  her 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY          211 

young.  These  are  things  of  which  we  may  read  in 
books,  and  which  have  their  place  in  systems  of 
thought  and  in  lists  of  virtues.  But  they  have  no 
real  existence  until  the  time  when  they  are  given  by 
men  to  men. 

Thus  far  we  have  confined  our  survey  to  that  por- 
tion of  Isaiah's  book  in  which  the  prophet  is  himself 
the  central  figure.  From  Assyria  to  Egypt,  his 
watchful  gaze  takes  in  the  world.  He  warns,  he 
threatens,  he  counsels,  he  pleads,  he  bears  constant 
witness  to  the  Divine  Master  who  has  appointed  him 
his  task.  With  the  fortieth  chapter,  we  come  to  a 
new  time  and  a  new  atmosphere.  Isaiah  himself 
has  long  since  disappeared.  The  city  which  he  strove 
so  earnestly  to  bring  to  a  sense  of  her  opportunities 
and  her  responsibilities  has  been  destroyed.  The 
people  who,  while  they  had  it,  valued  so  lightly  what 
they  had,  are  now  in  exile,  their  spirit  broken,  living 
only  in  the  future  and  in  the  past.  "They  that  led 
us  away  captive  required  of  us  then  a  song,  and 
melody  in  our  heaviness :  Sing  us  one  of  the  songs  of 
Zion."  But  they  asked  what  was  impossible.  "How 
shall  we  sing  the  Lord's  song  in  a  strange  land?'* 
The  problems  of  Isaiah's  day  have  not  indeed  been 


212  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

solved,  for  they  were  problems  which  are  still  to  be 
found  in  modern  states,  but  the  conditions  of  this 
new  time  are  such  that  they  no  longer  press  for  a 
solution.  There  is  no  need  of  hurling  invective  at 
those  who  have  lost  the  very  means  of  sinning  their 
old  sins,  or  of  trying  to  break  the  lawless  spirit  of 
those  whose  hearts  are  broken. 

If  our  comparison  were  between  Isaiah  and 
Browning  considered  simply  as  individuals,  these 
latter  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  would  be  quite 
beyond  its  scope.  But,  from  a  literary  point  of  view, 
the  use  of  many  centuries  has  stamped  Isaiah's  name 
upon  them,  and  has  given  them  a  permanent  abiding- 
place  within  his  pages.  We  know  that  Isaiah  did 
not  write  them,  but  we  do  not  know  who  did,  and  so 
they  have  always  been  called  by  the  name  which  ac- 
cident, or  tradition,  or  association  has  bestowed  upon 
them.  In  their  subject-matter,  and  their  structure, 
and  their  method,  they  differ  materially  from  the 
earlier  book.  They  deal  with  new  times  and  new 
conditions.  But  in  their  treatment  of  the  force  of 
personality  they  yield  no  whit  to  Isaiah  himself,  in 
the  days  when  he  was  looking  for  the  Messiah  who 
should  come.  Out  of  the  whole  Old  Testament,  it 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY          213 

is  here  that  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  is  ap- 
proached most  closely.  No  doubt,  there  are  critical 
questions  which  are  perplexing  and  obscure,  but, 
while  the  mind  may  not  always  be  certain  of  the 
meaning,  the  whole  passage  speaks  plainly  to  the 
heart.  The  prophet  reminds  his  people  that  even 
in  these  days  of  their  suffering  and  their  adversity 
there  is  still  a  work  for  them  to  do  for  God.  This 
nation  of  his,  wandering,  lonely,  stripped  of  all  that 
went  to  make  up  its  ancient  glory,  is  still  the  nation 
that  God  chose  for  Himself  from  among  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth.  If  the  old  responsibilities  have 
been  taken  from  them,  new  responsibilities  are  set 
forth  to  take  their  place.  "It  is  a  light  thing  that 
thou  shouldest  be  my  servant  to  raise  up  the  tribes 
of  Jacob,  and  to  restore  the  preserved  of  Israel: 
I  will  also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles,  that 
thou  mayest  be  my  salvation  unto  the  end  of  the 
earth."  There  is  nothing  local  nor  provincial  about 
their  task.  Rather  it  brings  them  into  touch  with 
the  whole  world.  Moreover,  it  is  a  work  so  intimate, 
so  personal,  that  the  prophet  cannot  express  himself 
by  speaking  of  it  as  belonging  only  to  the  state.  The 
state  is  an  individual,  a  person,  with  a  distinct  life  of 


214  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

its  own.  The  figure  of  the  Servant  of  the  Lord,  per- 
haps at  first  only  a  personification  of  the  nation, 
takes  on  more  and  more  the  breath  of  life,  until  at 
last  it  becomes  only  less  heroic  and  overpowering 
than  the  New  Testament  figure  in  which  it  reaches 
its  fulfilment.  If  this  is  an  ideal  conception,  it  is  a 
conception  which  possesses  all  the  qualities  which 
go  to  make  up  a  living  soul.  The  Lord  speaks  to 
this  servant  of  His  as  a  man  speaks  to  his  own 
familiar  friend.  "Fear  thou  not;  for  I  am  with 
thee:  be  not  dismayed;  for  I  am  thy  God:  I  will 
strengthen  thee;  yea,  I  will  help  thee;  yea,  I  will 
uphold  thee  with  the  right  hand  of  my  righteousness." 
Just  as  Isaiah  heard  God's  call,  and  straightway 
offered  himself  to  meet  the  need,  so  now  the  Servant 
is  sent  out  to  do  God's  work,  a  work  which  is  de- 
scribed in  the  very  words  that  by  and  by  were  to  be 
used  of  Jesus  Christ.  "I  the  Lord  have  called  thee 
in  righteousness,  and  will  hold  thine  hand,  and  will 
keep  thee,  and  give  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the  people, 
for  a  light  of  the  Gentiles;  to  open  the  blind  eyes, 
to  bring  out  the  prisoners  from  the  prison,  and  them 
that  sit  in  darkness  out  of  the  prison-house."  From 
the  very  beginning  the  Servant  has  been  appointed 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY           215 

to  this  task.  "The  Lord  hath  called  me  from  the 
womb ;  from  the  bowels  of  my  mother  hath  He  made 
mention  of  my  name."  The  Servant  can  perceive 
the  dignity  and  honor  of  his  calling.  He  is  quick  to 
hear  the  voice  of  God,  and  with  the  tongue  of  the 
learned,  the  tongue  of  one  who  has  been  taught  and 
understands,  he  knows  how  to  speak  a  word  in 
season  to  the  weary,  to  bring  the  peace  of  God  to 
those  who  are  distressed.  He  is  not  to  be  discouraged 
nor  turned  back.  Whatever  happens,  he  has  set 
his  face  like  a  flint,  and  though  there  may  be  failure 
in  the  sight  of  men,  in  God's  sight  he  is  assured  of 
final  victory. 

The  prophet  reaches  his  climax  in  that  passage 
which  has  been  read  for  centuries  on  Good  Friday, 
and  in  which  the  Old  Testament  seems  to  pass  fairly 
over  into  the  New.  The  one  thing  lacking  to  this 
sublime  Person  is  a  name.  He  stands  there,  and 
bears  his  witness  to  the  great  things  man  can  do. 
He  shows  that  character  means  more  than  circum- 
stance, that  submission  is  more  powerful  than  con- 
quest, that  it  is  he  who  is  ready  to  lose  his  life  who 
saves  it,  after  all.  For  himself,  there  is  only  the  most 
dismal  failure.  Even  those  who  should  have  been 


216  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

his  friends  were  found  apart,  lending  no  helping 
hand.  "He  is  despised  and  rejected  of  men;  a  man 
of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief:  and  we  hid 
as  it  were  our  faces  from  him ;  he  was  despised,  and 
we  esteemed  him  not."  But  out  of  all  this  weakness 
and  this  ill-success,  he  does  that  service  which  stands 
for  the  image  of  God  in  man,  and  in  the  possibility 
of  which  there  lies  that  human  dignity  which  is 
only  less  than  the  Divine.  What  does  his  own  re- 
jection matter?  It  is  not  in  terms  of  himself  that 
his  life  can  be  expressed.  "Surely,  he  hath  borne 
our  griefs,  and  carried  our  sorrows.  He  was  wounded 
for  our  transgressions,  he  was  bruised  for  our  iniqui- 
ties; the  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him; 
and  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed."  These  are  the 
things  that  man  can  do  for  man.  And  these  are  the 
things  that  none  but  a  living  man  can  do. 

There  is  no  region  in  which  the  ancient  prophet  — • 
including  not  only  the  patriot  who  lived  in  the  eighth 
century  before  Christ,  but  Isaiah  in  the  wider  liter- 
ary sense  —  and  our  modern  poet  come  closer  to- 
gether than  they  do  just  here.  The  three  thousand 
years  that  separate  them,  the  countless  differences  of 
environment  and  circumstance,  become  as  nothing 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY           217 

when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  their  common 
realization  of  the  worth  of  man.  This  is  a  key-note 
of  Browning's  writing.  Even  if  he  is  engaged  only 
in  putting  some  abstruse  system  of  philosophy  into 
metrical  form,  it  seldom  happens  that  there  is  not 
some  man,  sharply  denned  and  clearly  individual- 
ized, out  of  whose  mouth  comes  whatever  there  may 
be  of  speculation  or  opinion.  These  are  Ferishtah's 
Fancies,  not  mere  abstract  thought.  There  is  no 
poet  but  Shakespeare  who  deals  so  constantly  with 
persons.  To  one  of  his  volumes  he  gave  the  title 
"Men  and  Women."  He  is  "human  at  the  red-ripe 
of  the  heart." 

The  emphasis  which  Browning  lays  upon  person- 
ality is  everywhere  implicit  in  his  work.  It  is  present 
so  constantly  that  it  is  hard  to  isolate  it,  to  perceive 
it  more  in  one  place  than  another.  We  have  seen 
already  something  of  the  vigor  with  which  he  por- 
trays Guide,  and  Pompilia,  and  Caponsacchi.  These 
are  no  shadows,  they  are  flesh  and  blood.  "The 
Ring  and  the  Book"  is  something  more  than  litera- 
ture; it  is  Rome.  We  hear  the  crowd  as  it  surges 
through  the  streets.  We  see  the  many  types  from 
which  any  multitude  must  be  made  up.  We  be- 


218  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

come  impatient  at  their  half-understanding,  their  half 
knowledge,  "  so  universal  is  their  plague  of  squint." 
These  people  who  have  no  names,  who  emerge 
but  for  a  moment  from  the  throng  and  then  are 
lost  again,  are  yet  instinct  with  life.  There  is 

"some  man  of  quality 

Who —  breathing  musk  from  lace-work  and  brocade, 
His  solitaire  amid  the  flow  of  frill, 
Powdered  peruke  on  nose,  and  bag  at  back, 
And  cane  dependent  from  the  ruffled  wrist  — 
Harangues  in  silvery  and  selectest  phrase 
'Neath  waxlight  in  a  glorified  saloon 
Where  mirrors  multiply  the  girandole: 
Courting  the  approbation  of  no  mob, 
But  Eminence  This  and  All-Illustrious  That 
Who  take  snuff  softly,  range  in  well-bred  ring, 
Card-table-quitters  for  observance'  sake, 
Around  the  argument,  the  rational  word  — 
How  Quality  dissertated  on  the  case." 

This  is  one  group,  and  there  are  many  other 
groups  who  say  their  say,  with  varying  emphasis,  with 
opposite  prejudices,  from  very  different  points  of 
view.  Although  the  subject  of  the  poem  is  the 
tragedy  of  Pompilia,  there  is  scarcely  a  corner  of  the 
city  which  it  does  not  touch.  The  reader  feels  that 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY          219 

the  Rome  of  1698  is  almost  as  real  to  him  as  the 
town  in  which  he  lives,  and  that  these  people  who 
come  and  go  in  the  poet's  pages  are  his  own  ac- 
quaintances and  neighbors.  Perhaps  the  incidental 
and  minor  characters  are  the  most  vivid,  because 
they  are  less  directly  connected  with  a  theme  which, 
in  itself,  must  seem  strange  and  far  away.  But  the 
more  prominent  personages  are  also  sharply  in- 
dividualized. There  is  no  possibility,  for  example, 
of  confusing  the  two  lawyers,  for  all  the  likeness  that 
the  practice  of  the  same  profession  might  suggest. 
It  is  true,  there  is  an  absurdity  about  them  both,  and 
a  venality,  and  a  low  professionalism,  which  puts 
their  own  advantage  above  truth  and  justice.  But 
they  are  quite  distinct.  On  the  one  side  is  Master 
Hyacinth  de  Archangelis,  whose  duty  it  is  to  make 
Guido's  defence.  He  has  no  interest  in  Guido;  he 
knows  him  guilty;  but,  for  the  glory  that  it  will 
bring  himself,  he  would  like  to  get  the  culprit  off. 
He  shows  marvellous  ingenuity  in  making  the  worse 
appear  the  better  reason.  The  bloodthirsty  cut- 
throats whom  Guido  had  hired  to  help  him  in  his 
crime  the  advocate  represents  as  simple-minded  in- 
nocents who  bore  no  envy,  hate,  malice,  nor  un- 


220  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

charitableness  against  the  people  they  had  put  to 
death,  but  who  practiced  murder  only  as  a  pleasant 
means  by  which  they  might  turn  an  honest  penny. 
When  Guido  himself  refused  to  give  their  miserable 
wages  to  these  poor  wretches,  Master  Hyacinth  sees 
in  this  only  the  token  of  a  lofty  spirit  which  would 
not  vulgarize  vengeance  by  mixing  it  with  mercenary 
motives,  and  which  essays  a  gentle  missionary  work 
with  the  accomplices  by  sparing  them  the  pollution 
of  the  pay.  He  devotes  himself  in  a  desultory  man- 
ner to  the  preparation  of  his  case,  and  the  way  in 
which  it  is  to  be  presented  to  the  Pope. 

"It's  hard;  you  have  to  plead  before  these  priests 
And  poke  at  them  with  Scripture,  or  you  pass 
For  heathen  and,  what's  worse,  for  ignorant 
O'  the  quality  o'  the  court  and  what  it  likes 
By  way  of  illustration  of  the  law. 
To-morrow  stick  in  this,  and  throw  out  that, 
And,  having  first  ecclesiasticized, 
Regularize  the  whole,  next  emphasize, 
Then  latinize,  and  lastly  Cicero-ize, 
Giving  my  Fisc  his  finish.    There  's  my  speech ! " 

But,  even  while  he  works,  his  thought  is  not  of 
Guido  nor  of  Pompilia,  but  of  the  family  dinner 
which  is  to  be  served  presently,  and  of  the  little  son 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  221 

who  comes  that  day  to  eight  years  old,  and  whom 
he  apostrophizes  under  a  bewildering  confusion  of 
pet  names. 

On  the  other  side  is  Doctor  Bottinius,  the  Fiscal 
Advocate,  whose  business  it  is  to  prove  Guido 
guilty  —  no  hard  task.  He  is  no  less  a  scoundrel 
than  his  opponent,  without  the  redeeming  kindli- 
ness of  domesticity.  His  interest  is  solely  in  him- 
self. If  he  could  only  read  his  speech  instead  of 
printing  it !  If  the  scurvy  courtroom  could  be  turned 
into  an  immense  hall,  with  fifty  judges  sitting  in  a 
row  to  praise  his  eloquence !  He  would  rise,  and 
bend,  and  look  about,  consciously  unconscious, 
while  the  multitude  waited  breathlessly  for  him  to 
begin !  We  long  for  Hyacinth  and  his  lambs'  fries 
and  the  little  Cinoncello.  They  are  far  better  than 
this  man  with  his  dull  conceit,  his  labored  classicism, 
his  far-fetched  similes  that  have  no  point,  his  studied 
search  for  some  low  motive,  his  garish  self-import- 
ance. The  thing  which  he  had  to  do  was  plain 
enough,  but  he  plunges  and  tramples  until  the 
straight  road  becomes  a  quagmire.  The  Pompilia 
whom  he  describes  is  not  the  Pompilia  who  tells  her 
pitiful  story,  and  whose  innocence  and  purity  can 


222  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

turn  Caponsacchi  from  a  weak  priest  into  a  strong 
man.  She  is  an  imaginary  creation  of  a  man  who 
measures  all  things  by  his  own  low  standards,  for 
whom  the  whole  world  is  smirched  and  yellowed 
because  he  can  only  see  it  through  his  blinking  eyes. 
Bottinius  is  like  those  travelling  evangelists  who  set 
out  to  prove  the  inspiration  of  the  Scripture,  which 
needs  no  proof,  and  who  bring  to  their  superfluous 
task  such  grotesque  statements,  such  impossible  in- 
terpretations, such  unnatural  sequences,  such  pal- 
pable contradictions,  that  their  astounded  hearers 
are  sorely  tempted  to  escape  from  the  confusion  by 
turning  atheists  at  once.  Bottinius  prosecutes  Guido, 
but  it  is  the  prosecutor  who  almost  succeeds  in 
making  him  seem  innocent. 

If  these  precious  specimens  should  move  us  to 
think  too  unkindly  of  our  kind,  over  against  them 
is  set  the  majestic  figure, 

"Antonio  Pignatelli  of  Naples,  Pope 
Who  had  trod  many  lands,  known  many  deeds, 
Probed  many  hearts,  beginning  with  his  own, 
And  now  was  far  in  readiness  for  God." 

This  is  the  man  to  whom  the  case  must  come  for 
final  adjudication.  He  pays  no  heed  to  the  cunning 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY           223 

compliments  by  which  the  opposing  counsel  seek  to 
distract  his  attention  from  the  point  at  issue.  He 
brushes  aside  the  pitfalls  of  irrelevant  evidence  which 
they  prepare,  and  goes  straight  to  the  very  root  of 
things.  He  has  no  mind  for  sentimental  pity,  nor 
for  a  mercy  which  should  lend  encouragement  to 
crime.  He  recognizes  the  responsibility  of  judg- 
ment; his  own  judgment  cannot  be  far  away.  He 
goes  over  all  the  papers  in  the  case,  and  then  he 
takes  the  actors  in  it  under  consideration,  and  reads 
their  souls.  There  is  nothing  here  of  the  silly  gossip 
of  the  street-corner,  or  of  the  blundering  evasion  of 
the  hired  counsel  who  have  no  care  except  for  gain 
or  glory.  The  old  man  knows  the  world.  Though 
he  is  priest  and  Pope,  he  is  not  out  of  touch  with 
human  nature.  He  speaks  of  an  infant's  birth,  and 
the  spirit  in  which  it  should  be  met. 

"Men  cut  free  their  souls 
From  care  in  such  a  case,  fly  up  in  thanks 
To  God,  reach,  recognize  His  love  for  once." 

He  hears  Pompilia's  story  from  the  beginning,  and 
knows  that  it  must  be  true  because  she  tells  it,  just 
as  he  knows  that  a  man  like  Guido  must  be  all 
false. 


224  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"First  of  the  first, 

Such  I  pronounce  Pompilia,  then  as  now 
Perfect  in  whiteness;  stoop  thou  down,  my  child, 
Give  one  good  moment  to  the  poor  old  Pope, 
Heart -sick  at  having  all  his  world  to  blame  — 
Let  me  look  at  thee  in  the  flesh  as  erst, 
Let  me  enjoy  the  old  clean  linen  garb, 
Not  the  new  splendid  vesture !   Armed  and  crowned, 
Would  Michael,  yonder,  be,  nor  crowned  nor  armed, 
The  less  pre-eminent  angel?     Everywhere 
I  see  in  the  world  the  intellect  of  man, 
That  sword,  the  energy  his  subtle  spear, 
The  knowledge  which  defends  him  like  a  shield  — 
Everywhere;  but  they  make  not  up,  I  think, 
The  marvel  of  a  soul  like  thine,  earth's  flower 
She  holds  up  to  the  softened  gaze  of  God ! " 

The  judgment  which  he  makes,  though  it  must  be 
made  with  his  own  powers  and  with  the  human 
possibility  of  error,  is  in  God's  sight,  and,  humanly 
speaking,  in  God's  place. 

"Under  Thy  measureless,  my  atom  width!" 

But  he  does  not  hesitate. 

"I  stand  here,  not  off  the  stage  though  close 
On  the  exit:  and  my  last  act,  as  my  first, 
I  owe  the  scene,  and  Him  who  armed  me  thus 


THE   FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  225 

With  Paul's  sword  as  with  Peter's  key.     I  smite 
With  my  whole  strength  once  more,  ere  end  my  part, 
Ending,  so  far  as  man  may,  this  offence." 

There  could  be  no  more  characteristic  saying.  The 
Pope  is  no  abstraction,  but  a  man  who  is  alive  from 
head  to  foot. 

There  is  hardly  one  of  Browning's  poems  about 
which  something  of  this  sort  could  not  be  said. 
Fifine  is  real.  Balaustion  is  real.  Pippa  is  real.  So 
is  Filippo  Baldinucci,  as  he  sits  in  bloodthirsty  or- 
thodoxy and  mourns  the  time  when  Jews  could  be 
pelted  with  impunity,  and  kicked  and  cursed  to 
the  glory  of  God  and  to  one's  heart's  content.  So 
is  the  Lost  Leader,  with  the  breaking  of  faith  and 
the  severing  of  service. 

"Life's  night  begins;  let  him  never  come  back  to  us! 

There  would  be  doubt,  hesitation,  and  pain, 
Forced  praise  on  our  part —  the  glimmer  of  twilight, 
Never  glad  confident  morning  again!" 

So  is  the  little  Lippo  Lippi,  as  he  describes  the 
manner  in  which  he  came  to  be  a  monk. 

"I  was  a  baby  when  my  mother  died, 
And  father  died  and  left  me  in  the  street. 
I  starved  there,  God  knows  how,  a  year  or  two, 


226  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

On  fig-skins,  melon-parings,  rinds,  and  shucks, 

Refuse  and  rubbish.     One  fine  frosty  day, 

My  stomach  being  empty  as  your  hat, 

The  wind  doubled  me  up  and  down  I  went. 

Old  Aunt  Lapaccia  trussed  me  with  one  hand, 

(Its  fellow  was  a  stinger  as  I  knew), 

And  so  along  the  wall,  over  the  bridge, 

By  the  straight  cut  to  the  convent.     Six  words  there, 

While  I  stood  munching  my  first  bread  that  month: 

'So,  boy,  you're  minded,'  quoth  the  good  fat  father, 

Wiping  his  own  mouth,  't  was  refection-time  — 

'To  quit  this  very  miserable  world? 

Will  you  renounce'  .  .  .  '  the  mouthful  of  bread?'  thought  I; 

By  no  means!     Brief,  they  made  a  monk  of  me; 

I  did  renounce  the  world,  its  pride  and  greed, 

Palace,  farm,  villa,  shop,  and  banking-house, 

Trash,  such  as  these  poor  devils  of  Medici 

Have  given  their  hearts  to  —  all  at  eight  years  old !  " 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  multitude  of  men  and 
women  to  whom  the  poet's  creative  imagination  has 
given  life. 

But  Browning  does  more  than  fill  his  poems  with 
persons.  Like  the  old  prophets,  he  shows  what  per- 
sonality can  do.  Perhaps  the  most  striking  illustra- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  "Saul,"  when  David  comes  to 
the  king  and  tries  to  arouse  him  from  his  fit  of  dumb 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY           227 

madness.  For  three  days  not  a  sound  of  prayer  nor 
of  praise  has  come  from  the  tent  where  Saul  and  the 
Spirit  are  contending  in  mortal  strife.  Then  David 
prays,  and  prays  again,  and  takes  his  harp,  and  goes 
into  the  darkness. 

"Here  is  David,  thy  servant!" 

One  after  another  he  plays  the  tunes  to  which  Saul 
has  been  accustomed,  which  might  turn  the  tortured 
mind  in  some  new  direction,  and  relieve  the  tense 
nerves  and  over-wrought  brain  —  the  song  which 
brings  the  sheep  back  to  the  fold  at  night,  the  song 
to  which  the  crickets  listen,  and  the  quails,  and  the 
jerboas  in  the  desert,  the  help-tune  of  the  reapers, 
their  wine-song  when  "eye  lights  eye  in  good  friend- 
ship," the  dirge  when  the  dead  man  is  borne  to  his 
last  resting-place,  the  marriage  chant,  the  proces- 
sional hymn  which  the  Levites  sing  as  they  go  up 
to  the  altar.  Then,  at  the  very  first  token  that  Saul 
hears,  David  breaks  forth  into  the  praise  of  life. 

"  Oh,  our  manhood's  prime  vigor !    No  spirit  feels  waste, 
Not  a  muscle  is  stopped  in  its  playing,  nor  sinew  unbraced. 
Oh,  the  wild  joys  of  living,  the  leaping  from  rock  up  to  rock, 
The  strong  rending  of  boughs  from  the  fir-tree,  the  cool  silver 
shock 


228  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Of  the  plunge  in  a  pool's  living  water,  the  hunt  of  the  bear, 
And  the  sultriness  showing  the  lion  is  couched  in  his  lair. 
And  the  meal,  the  rich  dates  yellowed  over  with  gold-dust 

divine, 
And  the  locust-flesh  steeped  in  the  pitcher,  the  full  draught  of 

wine, 

And  the  sleep  in  the  dried  river-channel  where  bulrushes  tell 
That  the  water  was  wont  to  go  warbling  so  softly  and  well. 
How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living !  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  forever  in  joy ! " 

It  was  music  which  was  having  its  effect  on  Saul, 
but  it  was  music  which  no  one  but  David  could  have 
made.  He  goes  on  to  sing  of  Saul's  early  years,  his 
father's  sword,  his  mother's  blessing,  his  comrades, 
his  honors,  his  responsibilities.  Then,  little  by  little, 
Saul  comes  back  from  that  region  of  desolation  and 
unrest  in  which  his  soul  had  been  astray.  He  rouses 
himself,  and  listens,  and  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween death  and  life.  What  more  can  David  do  to 
help  him?  He  can  only  give  himself.  There  come 
back  to  him  fancies  which  he  had  first  known  in  the 
pasture,  when  his  sheep  fed  around  him  in  silence, 
and  a  solitary  eagle  floated  above  him  in  the  heavens. 
He  speaks  of  these,  the  schemes  of  life  which  he  had 
evolved  in  those  old  days,  its  best  rules  and  right 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY          229 

uses,  the  courage  which  makes  it  worth  while,  and 
the  prudence  which  keeps  safely  what  is  worth  the 
keeping.  Saul  listens  more  and  more. 

"He  slowly  resumed 
His  old  motions  and  habitudes  kingly." 

He  smooths  his  disheveled  hair,  and  wipes  away  the 
huge  sweat  that  bathes  his  countenance,  and  girds 
his  loins,  and  feels  for  the  precious  armlets  that  he 
was  used  to  wear. 

"He  is  Saul,  ye  remember  in  glory,  —  ere  error  had  bent 
The  broad  brow  from  the  daily  communion ;  and  still,  though 

much  spent 
Be  the  life  and  the  bearing  that  front  you,  the  same,  God  did 

choose 
To  receive  what  a  man  may  waste,  desecrate,  never  quite 

lose!" 

He  has  come  to  himself ;  and  he  has  come  to  himself 
through  David,  and  through  David's  love.  And 
David  knows  this,  and  presently  he  knows  what  it 
implies.  Saul  must  begin  anew,  and  what  assurance 
is  there  of  his  success?  He  is  a  failure,  a  mistake, 
a  ruin.  It  is  something  that  he  realizes  this,  but 
salvation,  and  redemption,  and  restoration  are  yet 


230  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

to  gain.  Where  may  they  come  from  ?  Then  David 
sees  the  sum  of  the  whole  matter. 

"Would  I  fain  in  my  impotent  yearning  do  all  for  this  man, 
And  dare  doubt  He  alone  shall  not  help  him,  who  yet  alone 
can?" 

What  David  has  done  is  but  an  earnest  of  what  God 
will  do. 

"See  the  King —  I  would  help  him  but  cannot,  the  wishes  fall 

through. 

Could  I  wrestle  to  raise  him  from  sorrow,  grow  poor  to  enrich, 
To  fill  up  his  life,  starve  my  own  out,  I  would,  knowing  which, 
I  know  that  my  service  is  perfect;  Oh,  speak  through  me 

now! 
Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love  ?    So  wouldst  thou  —  so 

wilt  thou!" 

The  personality  of  men  derives  its  significance  and 
power  from  the  Infinite  Personality  of  God;  and 
what  man  does,  by  himself,  becomes  as  nothing 
compared  with  what  he  would  do,  with  God  for 
his  ally. 

It  is  not  often  that  Browning  speaks  of  himself. 
He  tells  us  that  he  is  an  artist,  and  not  a  public 
show.  He  declares  that  if  Shakespeare  used  the 
sonnet  as  a  key  with  which  to  unlock  his  heart  be- 


THE   FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  231 

fore  the  world,  he  were  the  less  Shakespeare  for 
that  very  reason.  The  highest  personality  implies 
reserve.  But  now  and  then  he  lays  aside  this  reti- 
cence, and  speaks,  not  for  his  creatures,  but  for  him- 
self. We  have  seen  the  personal  faith  which  animated 
Paracelsus,  except  for  Pauline  the  poet's  earliest 
character,  and  which  stayed  with  Browning  until 
the  "Epilogue"  completed  his  life's  work.  There 
are  three  or  four  times  when  that  faith  is  added  to 
hope  and  love,  and  made  his  own  direct  confession. 
He  often  tells  us  what  soul  has  done  for  soul,  but  in 
these  rare  instances  we  know  what  it  is  that  his  own 
soul  has  gained.  We  find  it  in  "By  the  Fireside." 
There  is  the  fresh  Italian  landscape,  the  Apennines, 
the  little  lake,  the  yellow  mountain-flowers,  the 
creeper's  leaf  dashed  with  a  splash  of  crimson,  the 
stone  bridge  and  chapel,  the  lichens  and  the  hemp- 
stalks  and  the  ivy,  the  bird  that  sings  there  all 
through  the  long  day,  and  the  stray  sheep  that 
comes  to  the  pond  to  drink.  But  it  is  the  human 
companionship  that  gives  the  place  its  meaning. 

"My  perfect  wife,  my  Leonor, 
Oh  heart,  my  own,  oh  eyes,  mine  too, 
Whom  else  could  I  dare  look  backward  for?" 


232  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

And  so  he  reviews  the  years  that  they  have  spent 
together.  One  scene  after  another  takes  memory 
by  storm,  and  is  for  a  little  while  as  if  it  were  of  the 
very  substance  of  eternity. 

"  Oh  moment,  one  and  infinite ! 

The  water  slips  o'er  stock  and  stone; 
The  West  is  tender,  hardly  bright: 

How  gray  at  once  is  the  evening  grown  — 
One  star,  its  chrysolite." 

There  are  many  recollections,  and  as  he  reconstructs 
the  past  he  comes  to  see  what  it  is  that  has  made  his 
life  complete,  and  has  given  to  nature  to  gain  her 
best  from  him.  He  is 

"One  born  to  love  you,  sweet  1" 

But  the  past  implies  the  future.  What  of  the  years 
to  come? 

"Think,  when  our  one  soul  understands, 

The  great  Word  which  made  all  things  new, 
When  earth  breaks  up  and  heaven  expands, 

How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 
In  the  house  not  made  with  hands? 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  233 

"Oh  I  must  feel  your  brain  prompt  mine, 

Your  heart  anticipate  my  heart, 
You  must  be  just  before,  in  fine, 

See  and  make  me  see,  for  your  part, 
New  depths  of  the  divine!" 

The  influence  of  one  loving  human  heart  upon  an- 
other is  nothing  less  than  this.  If  it  begins  on  earth, 
it  cannot  reach  its  end  except  in  heaven. 

Something  of  the  same  sort  we  find  again  in  "  One 
Word  More,"  the  dedication  with  which  he  offers  the 
volume  called  "Men  and  Women"  to  his  wife. 
It  is  in  praise  of  that  innermost  expression  of  one's 
self  which  the  world  cannot  know,  nor  even  guess  at, 
but  which  is  reserved  as  the  possession,  choice  from 
its  very  rareness,  of  the  one  best  loved.  Raphael 
painted  his  pictures  for  the  world  to  see,  but  for 
one  only  he  made  a  century  of  sonnets,  which  no 
other  eyes  might  read.  Dante  once  set  out  to  paint 
an  angel  upon  which  none  but  Beatrice  should  ever 
look,  but  presently  there  broke  in  upon  him  "certain 
people  of  importance,"  noisy  and  bustling  and  tire- 
some, as  people  of  importance  are  so  apt  to  be  — 
and  he  stopped.  He  could  write  the  Divine  Comedy 
in  spite  of  them,  but  this  other  work  of  his  they 


234  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

spoiled.  It  is  so  with  our  own  poet.  He  has  some- 
thing to  give  the  world,  but  he  has  something  else 
to  give  to  the  one  who  is  more  than  all  the  world  to 
him. 

"God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  His  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her!" 

And  it  is  this  second  side  which  marks  that  separate- 
ness,  that  impossibility  of  being  ever  merged  in  any 
class  or  kind,  of  which  the  apostle  speaks  when  he 
tells  of  the  new  name  which  shall  be  written,  which 
no  man  knows  save  he  who  receives  it. 

"Thus  they  see  you,  praise  you,  think  they  know  you! 
There,  in  turn  I  stand  with  them  and  praise  you  — 
Out  of  my  own  self,  I  dare  to  phrase  it. 
But  the  best  is  when  I  glide  from  out  them, 
Cross  a  step  or  two  of  dubious  twilight, 
Come  out  on  the  other  side,  the  novel 
Silent  silver  lights  and  darks  undreamed  of, 
Where  I  hush  and  bless  myself  with  silence." 

When  Mrs.  Browning  died,  the  poet,  as  we  should 
have  expected,  made  small  sign.  His  wound  was  too 
deep  for  the  world  to  gaze  at.  But  while  he  never 
asks  for  sympathy,  and  while  pity  could  only  be  an 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY          235 

insult,  twice  at  least  he  speaks  in  such  a  way  that  he 
who  has  ears  to  hear  can  understand.  Once  is  in 
"Prospice."  Does  he  fear  death?  Not  he. 

"For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave, 

The  black  minute  's  at  end, 
And  the  elements'  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend, 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul !     I  shall  clasp  thee  again, 

And  with  God  be  the  rest!" 

The  other  time  is  at  the  beginning  of  "The  Ring  and 
the  Book,"  his  greatest  work.  He  has  marked  out 
the  paths  by  which  his  readers  are  to  go,  and  now 
the  story  stretches  away  before  them.  But  first  — 

"Never  may  I  commence  my  song,  my  due 
To  God  who  best  taught  song  by  gift  of  thee, 
Except  with  bent  head  and  beseeching  hand  — 
That  still,  despite  the  distance  and  the  dark, 
What  was,  again  may  be;  some  interchange 
Of  grace,  some  splendor  once  thy  very  thought, 
Some  benediction  anciently  thy  smile: 
Never  conclude,  but  raising  hand  and  head 
Thither,  where  eyes,  that  cannot  reach,  yet  yearn 
For  all  hope,  all  sustainment,  all  reward, 


236  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Their  utmost  up  and  on,  —  so  blessing  back 
In  those  thy  realms  of  help,  that  heaven  thy  home, 
Some  whiteness,  which,  I  judge,  thy  face  makes  proud, 
Some  wanness  where,  I  think,  thy  foot  may  fall!" 

The  story  takes  us  often  into  regions  where  base 
desires  and  mean  passions  have  their  dwelling.  If 
now  and  then  it  rises  to  the  heights,  there  are  many 
times  when  it  drags  through  the  depths,  or  bumps 
painfully  about  among  the  shallows  of  our  humanity. 
But  this  introduction  reaches  through  the  whole. 
It  adds  to  the  poem  something  that  could  not  have 
been  imparted  in  any  other  way.  In  its  own  degree, 
it  helps  us  to  understand  the  feeling  that  must  have 
come  to  Moses  when  he  heard  the  voice  speaking  to 
him  out  of  the  midst  of  the  bush,  and  saying  — 
"Put  off  thy  shoes  from  off  thy  feet,  for  the  place 
whereon  thou  standest  is  holy  ground." 

We  have  seen  that  Isaiah's  conception  of  per- 
sonality could  be  compressed  into  a  single  sen- 
tence. Browning's  conception  of  it  may  be  found 
complete  in  one  of  his  very  briefest  poems.  There  is 
no  direct  allusion,  but  we  know  what  he  means. 
Without  it,  and  with  it  —  we  may  perceive  the  dif- 
ference. 


THE  FORCE  OF  PERSONALITY  237 

"Such  a  starved  bank  of  moss! 

Till,  that  May  morn, 
Blue  ran  the  flash  across; 
Violets  were  born! 

"Sky —  what  a  scowl  of  cloud! 

Till,  near  and  far, 
Ray  on  ray  split  the  shroud; 
Splendid,  a  star! 

"World —  how  it  walled  about 

Life  with  disgrace  I 
Till  God's  own  smile  came  out: 
That  was  thy  face!" 

It  is  the  teaching  of  St.  John  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment that  the  Word  of  God  was  with  the  Father  in 
the  beginning,  and  from  all  eternity.  In  Him  was 
life,  and  the  life  was  the  light  of  men.  Speaking  at 
another  time,  and  in  a  somewhat  different  way,  he 
declares  that  he  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life,  and  that 
he  that  hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not  life.  The 
apostle  is  only  repeating  his  Master's  teaching. 
Christ  Himself  spoke  of  Himself  as  the  Resurrection 
and  the  Life;  as  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life; 
as  one  who  had  come  that  men  might  have  life,  and 
that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly;  as  the 


238  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Vine  of  which  the  disciples  were  the  branches,  and 
apart  from  which  they  could  do  nothing.  This 
fulness  of  life  in  Jesus  Christ,  which  He  imparts  to 
men  in  such  large  measure,  men  must  share  with 
those  who  are  closest  to  them  as  best  they  may. 
No  knowledge,  no  thought,  no  table  of  the  Law  can 
take  its  place.  It  is  the  one  thing  in  the  world  in 
which  the  image  of  God  upon  us  bears  no  counter- 
feit. The  prophets  learned  this  when  God  spake  to 
them  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners.  The 
poets  learned  it  when  they  made  themselves  the 
spokesmen  for  their  fellow-men,  and  spoke  to  God 
of  all  that  is  in  man's  heart.  It  is  in  personality  that 
life  consists ;  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  that 
a  man  possesseth,  but  in  what  he  is.  This  is  what 
Isaiah  meant  when  he  said  that  a  man  should  be  as 
an  hiding-place  from  the  wind  and  a  covert  from  the 
tempest.  This  is  what  Browning  meant  when,  in  the 
face  of  one  whom  he  loved,  he  saw  God's  smile. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    BESETTING    GOD 

WE  have  followed  Isaiah  and  Browning 
through  various  regions  in  which  they 
have  been  equally  at  home.  There  are  of  course 
great  divergences  between  them,  not  only  such  as 
would  be  inevitable  from  the  fact  that  one  is  a 
poet  and  the  other  a  prophet,  but  also  of  a  deeper 
and  more  thoroughgoing  sort.  It  would  be  impossi- 
ble to  find  in  Isaiah  anything  at  all  approaching  to 
Browning's  lighter  moods,  or  to  the  subtleties  of 
philosophical  speculation  in  which  he  was  some- 
times led  to  bury  his  poetic  gift.  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  find  in  Browning  anything  that  should 
correspond  to  Isaiah's  keen  sense  of  personal  respon- 
sibility for  the  condition  of  the  nation,  or  to  the 
watchful  anxiety  with  which  he  kept  himself  always 
in  the  very  thick  of  things.  Isaiah  was  as  little  of  an 
artist  as  Browning  of  a  statesman.  Isaiah  lavished 
upon  his  own  Jerusalem  that  passionate  affection  — 
fervent  with  all  the  fervor  of  the  burning  East  — 
which  Browning,  in  more  temperate  fashion,  be- 

239 


240  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

stowed,  not  upon  his  own  land,  but  upon  his  adopted 
Italy.  For  Isaiah  the  stage  direction  must  always  be 
To-day  and  Here.  For  Browning  it  might  be  At  Any 
Time  and  Anywhere.  But  in  many  ways  the  two  are 
strangely  and  strikingly  alike;  temperamentally, 
in  their  energy,  their  human  interest,  their  breadth 
and  clarity  of  view;  and  in  the  very  subject-matter 
of  their  thought,  as,  each  in  his  own  way  and  with 
his  own  background,  they  speak  of  the  good  which 
God  can  wrest  from  evil,  of  that  spark  of  the  Divine 
in  man  which  cannot  be  destroyed,  of  the  future  and 
all  that  it  may  hold  of  hope  and  promise,  and  of  that 
power  of  personality  which  gives  to  the  weakest  man 
a  force  which  no  abstract  idea  could  ever  have.  It 
remains  to  consider  that  meeting-ground  of  thought 
which  gives  significance  to  all  their  other  likenesses, 
that  recognition  of  God  as  the  Lord  and  Giver  of 
life,  no  absentee,  but  a  Dweller  and  Worker  in  His 
own  world,  without  which  Isaiah  could  not  have 
been  a  prophet,  nor  Browning  a  great  religious 
poet. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  prophecy  that  God  is  the 
foundation  upon  which  its  work  is  built.  Even  the 
false  prophets  hide  their  falseness  behind  His  name, 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  241 

and  try  to  clothe  their  lying  words  with  the  semblance 
of  His  approval.  The  great  prophets  of  the  Old 
Testament  have  their  own  methods  of  setting  forth 
this  truth.  To  Jeremiah  God  is,  at  least  to  some  ex- 
tent, a  Taskmaster.  He  would  keep  silent,  but  God 
compels  his  speech.  He  would  turn  aside  from 
troubling  men's  souls,  but  God  calls  him  back  again, 
and  he  cannot  hold  his  peace.  To  Ezekiel  God  is 
the  Vision  of  a  great  glory.  He  wanders  by  the  river 
Chebar,  forlorn,  disconsolate,  distressed.  He  would 
lift  up  his  eyes  to  the  hills  from  whence  comes 
strength,  but  the  flat  lands  of  Babylon  are  all  about 
him.  Then,  into  the  dreariness  of  his  exile,  there 
comes  the  whirlwind,  and  the  great  cloud,  and  the 
fire,  the  appearance  of  living  creatures,  and  the 
throne  like  sapphire,  and  the  likeness  of  One  that  sat 
upon  the  throne.  Ezekiel  is  young  and  vigorous, 
trained  to  serve  the  state,  full  of  the  zeal  that  ought 
to  be  —  even  though  there  are  many  times  when  it  is 
not  —  the  constant  companion  of  privilege,  and  of 
love  for  his  fatherland.  At  the  very  outset  of  his 
career,  every  door  of  opportunity  is  closed  against 
him.  Like  the  older  prophets,  he  would  have  given 
himself  for  Jerusalem,  to  live  for  her,  to  suffer  for 

16 


242  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

her,  to  die  for  her;  but  he  is  torn  from  his  home, 
and  set  to  eat  his  heart  out  in  a  dull  heathen  village. 
Whether  it  is  well  or  ill  with  Jerusalem  he  can  learn 
only  from  some  casual  messenger.  If  good  comes, 
he  can  have  no  share  in  it;  and  if  evil  befalls,  he 
cannot  even  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  the 
worst.  But,  while  he  is  so  shut  out  from  earth,  the 
heavens  are  opened  to  him.  If  he  may  not  dwell  in 
the  Holy  City,  God  will  be  with  him  where  he  is. 
And  so  we  have  those  dazzling  descriptions  of  the 
Divine  glory  which  surpass  those  of  any  other 
prophet,  and  that  elaborate  account  of  the  Temple, 
which  he  could  think  about,  even  though  he  might 
not  serve  in  it. 

But  to  Isaiah  God  is  more  than  a  Taskmaster  or 
a  Heavenly  Vision.  If  we  may  say  it  reverently, 
the  prophet  thinks  of  Him  as  a  Fellow-Worker,  an 
Ally.  "  I  heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord,  saying,  Whom 
shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us?  Then  said  I, 
Here  am  I;  send  me."  In  these  two  sentences  we 
have  the  whole  story  of  the  prophet's  life.  All  else 
is  a  mere  matter  of  detail.  He  recognizes  his  own 
unworthiness.  The  coal  from  the  altar  must  be  laid 
upon  his  mouth,  and  touch  his  lips,  that  it  may  take 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  243 

away  his  sin.     But  God's  worthiness  covers  those 
who  do  God's  work. 

The  whole  Book  of  Isaiah  is  the  assertion,  in  one 
form  and  another,  that  God  is  present  in  His  world, 
as  One  who  cares,  and  watches,  and  forbears,  and 
hopes.  The  Psalmist's  words  would  furnish  a  suit- 
able motto  for  it.  "Thou  art  about  my  path  and  about 
my  bed,  and  spiest  out  all  my  ways.  If  I  climb  up  into 
heaven,  Thou  art  there;  if  I  go  down  to  hell,  Thou 
art  there  also.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning 
and  remain  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea;  even 
there  also  shall  Thy  hand  lead  me,  and  Thy  right 
hand  shall  hold  me."  This  is  an  adequate  descrip- 
tion of  the  spirit  in  which  Isaiah  does  his  work.  If 
he  speaks  of  the  sins  of  his  people,  it  is  because,  in 
committing  them,  they  have  failed  in  their  duty 
towards  God.  If  he  looks  for  the  Messiah  who 
should  come,  it  is  because  he  comes  to  establish 
God's  kingdom  upon  earth.  His  own  call  is  the  com- 
mission which  God  has  given  him  for  that  war  in 
which  there  is  no  discharge.  This  is  implied  in 
every  smallest  portion  of  the  ground  which  we  have 
already  covered  —  Assyria  is  a  tool  which  God  holds 
in  His  hand  and  compels  to  do  His  work;  the 


244  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

remnant  which  must  return  bears  constant  witness 
to  the  fact  that  the  image  of  God  in  man  can  never 
be  altogether  blotted  out;  the  future  is  God's  har- 
vest time ;  man's  strength  is  but  an  indication  and  a 
suggestion  of  what  God's  strength  must  be.  When 
the  prophet  mounts  his  watch-tower  and  looks  about 
him  over  the  world,  it  is  because  he  knows  that  it  is 
still  God's  world,  even  though  it  lies  in  wickedness. 
God  is  a  devouring  fire  which  shall  burn  up  the  chaff, 
but  as  for  him  that  walketh  righteously  and  speaketh 
uprightly,  that  despiseth  the  gain  of  oppressions, 
that  shaketh  his  hands  from  holding  of  bribes,  that 
stoppeth  his  ears  from  hearing  of  blood,  and  shutteth 
his  eyes  from  seeing  evil,  he  shall  dwell  on  high 
with  God.  As  a  lion  clings  to  its  prey  and  will  not 
let  it  go,  though  a  mob  of  shepherds  lift  voice  and 
hand  against  him,  so  God  cannot  be  driven  from  the 
people  whom  He  has  chosen,  not  to  destroy  them  like 
the  lion,  but  to  cherish  and  protect.  As  a  mother- 
bird  hovers  over  her  nest,  so  God  watches  over 
Jerusalem  to  cover  and  deliver  it.  In  the  whole  Book 
of  Esther  the  name  of  God  is  not  once  used.  But  in 
the  Book  of  Isaiah  there  is  hardly  a  sentence  where 
it  is  not  at  least  implied. 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  245 

There  are  many  differences  between  the  two  parts 
of  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  but  in  passing  from  the  first  to 
the  second,  so  far  as  the  recognition  of  God's  con- 
trolling presence  in  the  world  is  concerned,  if  there  is 
any  difference  it  is  only  in  the  direction  of  greater 
intensity.  In  the  earlier  chapters,  Isaiah  is  God's 
fellow- worker ;  but  in  the  later  chapters  the  very 
narnelessness  of  the  prophet  who  writes  in  exile  does 
but  emphasize  the  fact  that  God  is  all,  and  in  all. 
In  a  few  sentences  at  the  beginning  the  prophet 
sets  forth  what  he  is  to  say  over  and  over  again  in 
different  ways.  "  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people, 
saith  your  God."  This  is  the  burden  that  is  laid 
upon  him.  It  is  his  God  who  speaks,  and  they  are 
God's  people  to  whom  he  must  go.  They  have  been 
desolate.  Now  God  is  coming  back  to  them.  "  Speak 
ye  home  to  the  heart  of  Jerusalem,  and  cry  unto  her, 
that  her  warfare  is  accomplished,  that  her  iniquity  is 
pardoned ;  for  she  hath  received  of  the  Lord's  hand 
double  for  all  her  sins." 

The  prophet  bears  his  message  —  a  Gospel  before 
the  Gospel's  day.  It  is  not  something  to  be  heard 
quietly,  and  without  emotion.  It  must  quicken  the 
pulses  and  stir  the  blood.  Jerusalem  is  in  ruins,  but 


246  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

no  matter;  the  dawn  of  better  things  is  already 
close  at  hand.  "  O  Zion,  that  bringest  good  tidings, 
get  thee  up  into  the  high  mountain;  O  Jerusalem, 
that  bringest  good  tidings,  lift  up  thy  voice  with 
strength;  lift  it  up,  be  not  afraid;  say  unto  the 
cities  of  Judah,  Behold  your  God!"  His  presence 
means  His  help  and  guidance.  They  are  to  go 
back,  but  it  is  an  army  in  which  there  is  little  martial 
strength.  But  God  has  all  that  they  lack.  "  Behold, 
the  Lord  God  will  come  with  strong  hand,  and  His 
arm  shall  rule  for  Him;  behold,  His  reward  is  with 
Him,  and  His  work  before  Him."  And  not  only  is 
God  the  Leader  of  their  expedition,  but  He  is  the 
Protector  of  those  who  are  weak,  and  helpless,  and 
unfitted  for  the  effort  that  must  be  made.  "  He  shall 
feed  His  flock  like  a  shepherd;  He  shall  gather  the 
lambs  with  His  arm,  and  carry  them  in  His  bosom, 
and  shall  gently  lead  those  that  are  with  young." 
So  presently  the  prophet  sums  up  his  message  in  a 
question  and  in  a  comprehensive  statement. 

"Hast  thou  not  known?  Hast  thou  not  heard, 
that  the  everlasting  God,  the  Lord,  the  Creator  of 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  fainteth  not,  neither  is  weary? 
There  is  no  searching  of  His  understanding.  He 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  247 

giveth  power  to  the  faint,  and  to  them  that  have  no 
might  He  increaseth  strength. 

"Even  the  youths  shall  faint  and  be  weary,  and 
the  young  men  shall  utterly  fall.  But  they  that 
wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength; 
they  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles;  they 
shall  run  and  not  be  weary;  and  they  shall  walk 
and  not  faint." 

It  would  be  hard  to  put  all  that  God  is  and  all 
that  God  does  in  a  plainer  and  stronger  way.  In 
time  —  from  the  beginning ;  in  space  —  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth;  in  knowledge,  beyond  knowledge. 
With  men,  He  can  inspire  them  with  the  enthusiasm 
which  leads  to  extraordinary  things;  or  He  can  go 
with  them  on  the  forced  marches  which  every  sol- 
dier is  called  upon,  now  and  then,  to  take,  and  for 
which  he  needs  all  his  reserve  of  strength  and  will; 
or  He  can  walk  with  them,  day  by  day,  along  the 
common  roads  of  life.  Whether  they  soar,  or  run, 
or  walk,  God  is  the  companion  of  those  who  wait 
upon  Him. 

The  succeeding  chapters  are  an  elaboration  of 
this  theme.  Israel  is  God's  people,  the  Servant  is 
the  Servant  of  the  Lord,  Cyrus  is  God's  chosen  one 


248  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

to  bring  about  a  great  deliverance,  the  idols  at  which 
the  prophet  hurls  his  withering  sarcasm  are  God's 
adversaries.  We  hear  God  speaking  of  Himself 
with  a  positiveness  which  suggests  nothing  but  the 
certainty  of  Jesus  Christ  that  He  is  the  Son  of  God. 
Do  His  people  need  Him?  There  is  nothing  that 
He  cannot  do  to  help.  "I  am  the  Lord:  That  is 
my  name;  and  my  glory  will  I  not  give  to  another." 
He  is  the  first  and  the  last,  the  Creator  of  Israel, 
their  Holy  One,  their  King.  "I,  even  I,  am  the 
Lord,  and  beside  me  there  is  no  Saviour.  I  have  de- 
clared, and  have  saved,  and  I  have  showed  when 
there  was  no  strange  god  among  you;  therefore  ye 
are  my  witnesses,  saith  the  Lord,  that  I  am  God. 
Yea,  before  the  day  wa's  I  am  He ;  and  there  is  none 
that  can  deliver  out  of  my  hand;  I  will  work,  and 
who  shall  let  it." 

This  is  God's  word  to  Israel,  but  beyond  Israel 
there  are  those  others  with  whom  no  such  binding 
covenant  had  been  made.  There  were  those  in 
Israel,  of  course,  who  would  have  thrust  them  out, 
or  would  at  least  have  kept  them  at  an  immeasurable 
distance.  The  God  of  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and 
Jacob,  was  not  for  them.  But  not  our  prophet.  He 


THE   BESETTING  GOD  249 

hears  their  cry,  and  puts  it  into  words.  "  Doubtless 
Thou  art  our  Father,  though  Abraham  be  ignorant 
of  us,  and  Israel  acknowledge  us  not."  Wherever 
men  long  for  Him,  there  God  will  be.  This  is  the 
one  condition  of  the  invitation  that  is  given.  "Ho, 
every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye  to  the  waters,  and 
he  that  hath  no  money ;  come  ye,  buy  and  eat ;  yea, 
come,  buy  wine  and  milk  without  money  and  with- 
out price."  Israel  itself  is  glorified  the  more  be- 
cause of  the  nations  who  come  to  it,  not  for  its  own 
sake  nor  for  their  sakes,  but  because  of  the  Lord 
who  is  its  God.  The  prophecy  is  full  of  climaxes, 
but  perhaps  the  climax  of  them  all  is  to  be  found  in 
that  sublime  chapter  in  which  Israel  is  called  upon 
to  take  its  old  privilege  once  more,  that  it  may  do 
God's  work,  not  only  in  the  new  Jerusalem,  but  in 
all  the  world.  We  read  it  as  a  hymn  of  comfort  and 
inspiration,  but  it  is  just  as  much  a  hymn  of  praise. 
"Arise,  shine,  for  thy  light  is  come,  and  the  glory 
of  the  Lord  is  risen  upon  thee."  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence what  there  may  be  without,  in  the  way  of  ob- 
stacle or  hindrance;  God  is  with  them,  and  that  is 
enough.  "Behold,  the  darkness  shall  cover  the 
earth,  and  gross  darkness  the  people;  but  the  Lord 


250  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

shall  arise  upon  thee,  and  His  glory  shall  be  seen 
upon  thee."  This  glory  shows  itself  in  their  new 
strength,  and  in  an  attractive  power  which  they 
never  had  before;  the  Gentiles  coming  to  their 
light,  and  kings  to  the  brightness  of  their  rising.  It 
is  a  picture  which  is  in  startling  contrast  to  their 
present  low  estate.  "  Lift  up  thine  eyes  round  about, 
and  see;  all  they  gather  themselves  together,  they 
come  to  thee;  thy  sons  shall  come  from  far,  and 
thy  daughters  shall  be  nursed  at  thy  side.  Then 
thou  shalt  see,  and  flow  together,  and  thine  heart 
shall  fear,  and  be  enlarged;  because  the  abundance 
of  the  sea  shall  be  converted  unto  thee,  the  forces 
of  the  Gentiles  shall  come  unto  thee." 

The  picture  is  enlarged  and  amplified.  We  see 
the  camels  of  the  desert,  and  the  dromedaries  of 
Midian  and  Ephah.  Sheba  sends  her  treasures, 
and  Kedar  her  flocks.  As  doves  to  their  windows, 
or  as  clouds  upon  a  summer's  day,  men  come  from 
the  isles  and  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  the  name 
of  the  Lord  their  God,  and  to  the  Holy  One  of 
Israel.  The  sons  of  strangers  will  build  up  the  city 
walls,  and  those  who  despised  her  will  bow  them- 
selves down  in  her,  knowing  that  she  is  indeed  the 


THE   BESETTING  GOD  251 

city  of  the  Lord.  The  prophet  finds  that  words  are 
scarcely  equal  to  the  glory  which  he  would  describe. 

"Violence  shall  be  no  more  heard  in  thy  land, 
wasting  nor  destruction  within  thy  borders;  but 
thou  shalt  call  thy  walls  Salvation,  and  thy  gates 
Praise.  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by 
day ;  neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light 
unto  thee ;  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  ever- 
lasting light,  and  thy  God  thy  glory.  Thy  sun  shall 
no  more  go  down ;  neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw 
itself;  for  the  Lord  shall  be  thine  everlasting  light, 
and  the  days  of  thy  mourning  shall  be  ended." 

It  is  a  magnificent  picture  of  the  restoration  that 
should  come  to  Jerusalem.  But  it  is  also  a  picture 
of  the  power  and  glory  of  Almighty  God. 

This  perception  of  God  immanent  in  the  world 
is  of  course  of  the  very  air  in  which  prophecy  was 
born.  It  is  prophecy's  chief  subject;  indeed,  there 
could  be  no  prophecy  without  it.  With  poetry  it 
is  otherwise.  While  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of 
prophecy  that  it  must  begin  with  God,  poetry  begins 
with  man,  and  works  upward  and  outward  along 
the  many  roads  by  which  the  mind  of  man  is  wont 
to  travel.  There  is  much  poetry,  and  even  much 


252  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

noble  poetry,  in  which  there  is  no  word  of  God  at 
all;  but  sooner  or  later  a  poet  of  the  first  magni- 
tude must  speak  of  Him.  Apart  from  God,  he 
cannot  deal  with  the  depths  of  man's  soul,  or  with 
the  mountain-summits  of  man's  mind.  It  is  so 
with  Browning.  He  has  many  subjects,  and  he 
speaks  in  many  tones.  Sometimes  he  is  trivial;  a 
carping  critic  might  even  be  disposed  to  call  him 
trifling.  Often  he  is  so  engrossed  with  the  men 
and  women  whom  he  has  created  that  we  see  them 
only  at  the  moment  of  the  poem's  action,  and  are 
given  no  opportunity  for  any  further  thought  about 
them.  Often,  as  we  have  seen  many  times  in  pre- 
vious chapters,  God  is  implicit  in  his  work,  a  Char- 
acter without  whom  the  drama  could  not  go  on, 
away  from  whom  the  whole  scene  would  be  unin- 
telligible. The  old  Grammarian  would  be  a  carica- 
ture apart  from  God.  So  would  the  man  who 
sought  to  escape  the  tyrant,  and  who  found  sudden 
safety  when  he  prayed.  So  would  the  Pope.  So 
would  David,  as  he  brought  new  life  back  to  Saul. 

But  while  God  holds  no  such  commanding  pre- 
eminence in  Browning's  thought  as  He  must  of 
necessity  have  done  with  Isaiah  and  with  the  later 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  253 

Prophet  of  the  Exile,  there  are  times  when  He  is 
not  only  the  explanation  and  the  justification  of 
the  poet's  characters,  but  when  He  is  Himself  the 
poet's  chief  subject.  We  need  not  call  again  upon 
the  witness  that  is  borne  to  Him  in  "Christmas 
Eve,"  and  "Easter  Day."  Most  of  the  poems 
which  have  been  already  quoted  in  other  connec- 
tions might  find  an  equally  appropriate  place  in 
our  present  comparison.  Thus,  in  the  case  of 
Johannes  Agricola,  we  have  a  study  in  colossal 
selfishness.  He  cares  not  a  whit  what  may  happen 
to  the  rest  of  the  world  so  long  as  he  is  safe.  Their 
very  misfortunes  serve  to  set  forth  his  happiness 
the  more  by  contrast.  But  it  is  a  strange  sort  of 
selfishness,  a  selfishness  consecrated,  as  it  were, 
and  sanctified  —  the  more  hideous  for  that  reason, 
but  also  the  more  impressive,  in  that  it  shows  how 
men  are  wont  to  call  vice  virtue,  and  how  they  seek 
to  bring  God  into  connection  even  with  their  sins. 
The  monk's  meditation  turns  presently  into  a  cold- 
blooded picture  of  souls  in  hell,  but  what  could  be 
more  religious  than  the  way  in  which  it  opens ! 

"There's  heaven  above,  and  night  by  night 
I  look  right  through  its  gorgeous  roof; 


254  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

No  suns  and  moons  though  e'er  so  bright 
Avail  to  stop  me;  splendor-proof 
I  keep  the  broods  of  stars  aloof; 

For  I  intend  to  get  to  God, 

For  't  is  to  God  I  speed  so  fast, 

For  in  God's  breast,  my  own  abode, 
Those  shoals  of  dazzling  glory  passed, 
I  lay  my  spirit  down  at  last." 

God  is  made  the  foundation,  even  though  the  struc- 
ture that  is  built  upon  Him  is  one  which  cannot 
stand. 

With  the  Grammarian,  God  is  the  subject  of 
no  such  travesty.  His  aim  is,  not  an  impossible 
salvation  for  a  withered  soul,  but  a  fulness  of  know- 
ledge for  which  life  gives  the  opportunity.  He 
would  love  God,  not  only  with  heart  and  soul  and 
strength,  but  with  all  his  mind  —  a  portion  of  our 
Lord's  commandment  which  many  home-made 
systems  of  religion  have  ignored.  But  it  is  one  of 
those  things  which  marks  the  difference  between 
greatness  and  littleness,  between  heroism  and  the 
commonplace. 

"That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 
Sees  it  and  does  it: 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  255 

This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 

Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 
That  low  man  goes  on  adding  one  to  one, 

His  hundred's  soon  hit: 
This  high  man,  aiming  at  a  million, 

Misses  an  unit. 
That,  has  the  world  here  —  should  he  need  the  next, 

Let  the  world  mind  him ! 
This,  throws  himself  on  God,  and  unperplexed 

Seeking  shall  find  Him." 

He  cannot  be  content  unless  he  shall  gain  the  very 
most  from  life,  and  he  knows  that  he  cannot  gain 
the  most  without  seeking  the  Highest  and  trusting 
in  the  Best. 

There  is  a  method  of  confessing  God  which  vir- 
tually amounts  to  a  denial  of  Him.  It  is  that  attitude 
towards  Him  which  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  satirizes 
in  his  withering  version  of  the  Decalogue  made  easy. 

"Thou  shalt  have  one  God  only;  who 
Would  be  at  the  expense  of  two?" 

The  same  thing  is  described  in  a  clever  couplet. 

"They  did  not  abolish  the  gods  but  they  sent  them  well  out  of 

the  way, 

With  the  rarest  of  nectar  to  drink,  and  blue  fields  of  nothing 
to  sway." 


256  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

There  is  nothing  of  this  sort  with  Browning.  Even 
when  he  does  not  name  God's  name,  God  is  the 
background  against  which  he  thinks  his  thoughts. 
It  is  the  soul's  world,  not  the  worm's  world,  which 
he  seeks,  in  which  he  believes,  and  of  whose  final 
triumph,  amid  whatever  strifes  and  storms,  he  is 
always  certain. 

"I  have  faith  such  end  shall  be; 

From  the  first,  Power  was —  I  knew; 
Life  has  made  clear  to  me 

That,  strive  but  for  closer  view 
Love  were  as  plain  to  see. 

"When  see?    When  there  dawns  a  day, 

If  not  on  the  homely  earth, 
Then  yonder,  worlds  away, 

Where  the  strange  and  new  have  birth, 
And  Power  comes  full  in  play." 

This  is  an  old  man's  deliberate  judgment  upon  the 
facts  of  life.  He  is  content  to  leave  much  unex- 
plained. He  is  more  than  content  to  leave  many 
things  unperfected.  But  Power  and  Love  —  what 
do  they  spell  but  God?  And  these  remain  when 
all  those  things  that  can  be  shaken  have  been 
destroyed. 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  257 

While  Browning's  literary  style  is  essentially 
his  own,  he  lets  his  characters  speak  for  them- 
selves, and  not  for  him.  ,  They  live  in  their  own 
times,  they  are  bound  by  their  own  conditions, 
they  do  not  appear  as  anachronisms  or  exotics 
upon  the  scene.  They  have  their  own  point  of 
view,  and  are  never  mere  puppets  in  a  master's 
hand.  But,  in  a  long  succession  of  poems,  this 
point  of  view  is  one  which  makes  much  of  God. 
With  whatever  type  of  character  the  poet  deals, 
he  is  always  "sure  that  God  observes";  and  he  is 
sure,  too,  that  God  is  observed,  even  by  those  who 
would  be  glad  to  close  their  eyes  against  Him. 
Guido  cannot  escape  from  Him.  Caliban  is  forced 
to  speculate  about  Him,  albeit  it  must  be  in  a  crude, 
misshapen  way,  commensurate  with  his  distorted 
form  and  twisted  nature.  Hohenstiel  Schwangau 
believes  that  God  grants  to  each  new  man 

"Inter-communication  with  Himself, 
Wreaking  on  finiteness  infinitude." 

Francis  Furini,  the  painter-poet,  sees  token  of  His 
presence  in  the  human  form. 

"Acquaint  you  with  the  body  ere  your  eyes 
Look  upward:  this  Andromeda  of  mine  — 


258  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Gaze  on  the  beauty,  Art  hangs  out  for  sign 
There's  finer  entertainment  underneath. 
Learn  how  they  ministrate  to  life  and  death — 
Those  incommensurably  marvellous 
Contrivances  which  furnish  forth  the  house 
Where  soul  has  sway !    Though  Master  keep  aloof, 
Signs  of  His  presence  multiply  from  roof 
To  basement  of  the  building." 

Luria  the  Moor  prefers  his  own  land  to  Florence; 
and  in  the  praise  of  his  own  land  he  praises  God. 

"My  own  East! 

How  nearer  God  we  were!    He  glows  above 
With  scarce  an  intervention,  presses  close 
And  palpitatingly,  His  soul  o'er  ours ! 
We  feel  Him,  nor  by  painful  reason  know! 
The  everlasting  minute  of  creation 
Is  felt  there:  now  it  is,  as  it  was  then; 
All  changes  at  His  instantaneous  will, 
Not  by  the  operation  of  a  law 
Whose  maker  is  elsewhere  at  other  work." 

Karshish,  the  Arab  physician,  is  "not  incurious  in 
God's  handiwork."  He  has  traveled  to  Jerusalem, 
and  many  strange  things  were  brought  within  the 
range  of  his  experience.  There  were  rumors  through- 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  259 

out  the  country-side  of  Vespasian's  coming.  In  the 
wilderness, 

"A  black  lynx  snarled  and  pricked  a  tufted  ear." 

He  has  had  the  opportunity  of  observing  new 
diseases,  and  he  has  heard  of  new  remedies  which 
he  will  discuss  with  his  friend  Abib  when  they 
meet  again.  Meanwhile,  he  has  talked  with  Laza- 
rus, and  has  heard  from  Lazarus'  own  lips  the 
story  of  his  friendship  with  Jesus  Christ  and  of 
his  raising  from  the  dead.  He  doubts  the  tale,  of 
course,  and  scoffs  at  it.  He  apologizes  to  Abib  for 
writing  to  him  of  such  trivial  matters,  when  he 
might  be  telling  of  blue-flowering  borage,  and  other 
things  important  to  their  profession.  But  even 
while  he  makes  light  of  the  story,  he  cannot  get 
away  from  it.  If  Lazarus  is  a  deceiver, 

"Whence  has  the  man  the  balm  that  brightens  all?" 

If  Lazarus  is  mad,  his  madness  is  of  a  most  un- 
common kind;  it  does  not  disquiet,  but  steadies 
and  strengthens  him.  That  God  should  dwell  on 
earth  in  fashion  as  a  man,  and  heal  the  sick,  and 
raise  the  dead  to  life  —  it  altogether  passes  com- 
prehension. But  if  Karshish  cannot  quite  believe 


26o  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

it,  he  pays  it  at  least  the  tribute  of  wonder  and 
amazement. 

"The  very  God!  think,  Abib;  dost  thou  think? 
So,  the  All-Great,  were  the  All-Loving  too  — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying,  'O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself! 
Thou  hast  no  power  nor  may'st  conceive  of  mine, 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  me  who  have  died  for  thee!' 
The  madman  saith  He  said  so;  it  is  strange." 

These  are  a  few  of  the  men,  of  all  sorts  and  of 
all  conditions,  who  testify  to  God  in  Browning's 
pages.  Not  many  of  his  poems  could  properly  be 
called  religious  poems,  but  they  are  as  much  more 
religious  than  many  professedly  religious  poems  as 
a  godly  layman  is  better  than  an  ignorant  and 
careless  priest.  They  wear  no  ecclesiastical  cloth- 
ing, but  God  is  at  their  heart.  This  taking  of  God 
for  granted,  without  argument  and  without  apology, 
does  but  add  to  the  impression  that  is  produced  of 
the  inevitableness  of  His  presence  in  the  world. 
When  Browning  goes  into  metaphysics,  while  he 
is  subtle  and  ingenious,  we  must  feel  that  some- 


THE   BESETTING  GOD  261 

thing  of  his  power  has  been  lost.  Mere  probability 
can  never  take  the  place  of  knowledge ;  and  guesses 
at  truth  are  a  poor  substitute  for  Truth  itself,  of 
which  we  are  so  certain  that  it  does  not  need  to 
be  explained. 

But  now  and  then,  apart  from  "Christmas  Eve," 
and  "Easter  Day,"  and  "Saul,"  and  "Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra,"  and  the  magnificent  faith  of  Pompilia  and 
the  Pope,  Browning  deals  with  a  subject  which  is 
distinctly  religious  from  the  start.  In  "La  Saisiaz" 
he  asks  those  deep  questions  about  life  and  im- 
mortality which  are  suggested  by  the  sudden  death 
of  a  friend,  with  whom,  on  the  very  next  day,  he 
had  planned  to  climb  the  mountain.  He  makes 
the  ascent  alone. 

"Dared  and  done;  at  last  I  stand  upon  the  summit,  Dear  and 

True! 
Singly  dared  and  done  •  the  climbing  both  of  us  were  bound 

to  do. 

Petty  feat  and  yet  prodigious :  every  side  my  glance  was  bent 
O'er  the  grandeur  and  the  beauty  lavished  through  the  whole 

ascent. 
Ledge  by  ledge,  out  broke  new  marvels,  now  minute  and  now 

immense : 
Earth's  most  exquisite  disclosure,  heaven's  own  God  in 

evidence ! " 


262  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

Amid  the  stillness  and  the  solitude  of  those  Alpine 
peaks,  God  seems  very  near.  The  poem  itself  is 
argument  rather  than  assertion.  Not  to  every 
question  is  there  an  answer.  Not  for  every  hope 
can  there  be  proof.  But  while  there  cannot  be  cer- 
tainty on  every  point,  while  there  is  room  for  doubt, 
while  many  a  problem  must  go  for  a  while  unsolved, 
this  at  any  rate  the  poet  would  have  men  say  of 
him. 

"Well?    Why  he  at  least  believed  in  Soul,  was  very  sure  of 
God!" 

This  is  his  Holy  of  Holies  into  which  no  doubt  can 
come. 

Very  different  from  "La  Saisiaz,"  but  like  it  in 
the  thorough-goingness  of  its  religious  motive,  is 
"A  Death  in  the  Desert,"  in  which  Browning  por- 
trays the  last  hours  of  St.  John.  There  is  a  power- 
ful contrast  between  the  bleakness  of  the  physical, 
and  the  splendor  of  the  spiritual  world.  The  old 
man  lies  in  a  cave  amongst  the  rocks,  while  four 
disciples  watch  his  breath  grow  faint  and  fainter. 
At  any  moment  there  may  be  rude  interruption. 
Thieves  are  abroad,  and  persecutors,  and  wild 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  263 

beasts.  By  the  mouth  of  the  cave,  one  of  the  little 
group  keeps  watch,  under  pretence  of  grazing  a 
goat  on  rags  of  various  herb  which  the  rocks'  shade 
just  keeps  alive. 

"Outside,  the  Bactrian  cried  his  cry, 
Like  the  lone  desert-bird  that  wears  the  ruff, 
As  signal  we  were  safe,  from  time  to  time." 

Then  the  sick  man  speaks.  He  is  not  conscious  of 
his  weakness.  He  is  not  conscious  of  the  dreari- 
ness of  his  surroundings. 

"What  do  I 

See  now,  suppose  you,  there  where  you  see  rock 
Round  us?" 

He  goes  back  to  the  time  when  he  was  young,  when 
he  had  first  known  Jesus  Christ. 

"Since  I,  whom  Christ's  mouth  taught,  was  bidden  teach, 
I  went  for  many  years  about  the  world, 
Saying —  'It  was  so;  so  I  heard  and  saw.'" 

Now  things  are  changed.  There  is  need  of  some- 
thing more  than  testimony.  There  is  need  of  some- 
thing more  than  miracle. 


264  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

"I  say  that  man  was  made  to  grow,  not  stop; 
That  help,  he  needed  once,  and  needs  no  more, 
Having  grown  but  an  inch  by,  is  withdrawn: 
For  he  hath  new  needs,  and  new  helps  to  these. 
This  imports  solely,  man  should  mount  on  each 
New  height  in  view;  the  help  whereby  he  mounts, 
The  ladder-rung  his  foot  has  left,  may  fall, 
Since  all  things  suffer  change  save  God  the  Truth." 

So,  though  John  dies,  and  though  John  be  the  last 
man  left  on  earth  who  has  seen,  and  touched,  and 
handled  the  Word  of  Life,  it  does  not  matter.  There 
is  no  further  need  for  seeing  of  that  sort. 

"I  say,  the  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ, 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it." 

Life  gives  to  man  his  chance  of  the  prize  of  learn- 
ing love.  It  gives  him  too  —  and  to  most  of  us, 
with  our  sins,  and  failures,  and  temptations,  and 
mistakes,  the  thought  must  be  an  eternally  blessed 
one  —  the  chance  of  coming  to  know  that  he  is  not 
complete,  that  he 

"  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be." 

The  disciple  would  say  this;  and  if  there  be  any- 
thing more  that  he  could  say  wherein  his  struggling 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  265 

brothers  need  a  hand  he  would  linger  to  say  it 
though  he  must  tarry  a  new  hundred  years.  But 
he  was  dead. 

"Believe  ye  will  not  see  him  any  more 
About  the  world  with  his  divine  regard! 
For  all  was  as  I  say,  and  now  the  man 
Lies  as  he  lay  once,  breast  to  breast  with  God." 

Browning  was  writing  poetry  for  almost  sixty 
years.  Few  men  have  had  so  wide  a  range  of  sub- 
jects, or  have  produced  so  great  a  mass  of  work. 
But  there  is  scarcely  one  of  his  important  poems 
in  which,  under  one  aspect  or  another,  God  is  not 
present,  not  as  a  mere  name,  but  as  One  who  is 
needed  to  complete  the  sense.  When  Browning 
wrote  "Paracelsus"  he  was  twenty-three.  When  he 
wrote  the  "Reverie"  and  the  "Epilogue"  he  was 
little  short  of  eighty.  But  in  them  all  there  is  the 
same  God-consciousness  which  he  possesses  above 
all  our  other  poets.  He  began  with  it.  Paracelsus 
goes  forth  upon  his  quest  because  he  would  not 
"reject  God's  great  commission."  He  is  sure  that 
God 

"Ne'er  dooms  to  waste  the  strength  that  He  imparts!" 


266  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

In  completed  man  he  sees  begin  anew  a  tendency 
towards  God.  This  Godward  look  Browning  re- 
tains when  his  genius  reaches  its  high-water  mark 
in  "The  Ring  and  the  Book."  A  sordid  story  is 
made  to  issue  in  splendid  sacrifice,  a  cowardly  crime 
brings  us  presently  to  the  Pope,  one  of  the  noblest 
figures  in  our  literature.  What  Pompilia,  as  she 
lies  dying,  says  of  her  child,  the  little  life  that  must 
be  left  all  by  itself,  shows  us  the  manner  in  which 
Browning  was  wont  to  think  of  God. 

"Shall  not  God  stoop  the  kindlier  to  His  work, 
His  marvel  of  creation,  foot  would  crush, 
Now  that  the  hand  He  trusted  to  receive 
And  hold  it,  lets  the  treasure  fall  perforce? 
The  better;  He  shall  have  in  orphanage 
His  own  way  all  the  clearlier;  if  my  babe 
Outlived  the  hour —  and  he  has  lived  two  weeks  — 
It  is  through  God  who  knows  I  am  not  by. 
Who  is  it  makes  the  soft  gold  hair  turn  black, 
And  sets  the  tongue,  might  lie  so  long  at  rest, 
Trying  to  talk  ?    Let  us  leave  God  alone ! 
Why  should  I  doubt  He  will  explain  in  time 
What  I  feel  now,  but  fail  to  find  the  words? 
My  babe  nor  was,  nor  is,  nor  yet  shall  be 
Cdunt  Guido  Franceschini's  child  at  all  — 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  267 

Only  his  mother's,  born  of  love  not  hate! 

So  shall  I  have  my  rights  in  after-time. 

It  seems  absurd,  impossible  to-day; 

So  seems  so  much  else,  not  explained  but  known ! " 

This  is  Browning's  constant  attitude  —  things  must 
be  left  with  God.  When,  now  and  then,  he  essays 
to  explain,  he  becomes  very  much  like  other  people. 
But  when  he  tells  of  what  he  sees  and  knows,  he 
lifts  us  to  the  loftiest  regions  of  the  soul. 

We  have  traced  the  parallelism  between  Isaiah 
and  Browning  in  many  ways.  Their  own  words 
speak  for  them,  and  show  how  close  it  is.  In  part, 
no  doubt,  it  is  due  to  the  towering  stature  of  them 
both.  Aside  from  the  commonest  experiences  of 
universal  humanity,  there  would  be  little  enough  to 
connect  the  Hebrew  of  the  eighth  century  before 
Christ  with  the  Englishman  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury of  the  Christian  era;  but  as  men  climb  the 
mountain  they  must  draw  near  each  other,  and 
when  one  passes  above  Isaiah  or  above  Browning 
there  is  not  far  to  go.  In  part,  again,  their  likeness 
is  due  to  the  intense  religious  nature  of  them  both. 
Whatever  may  be  the  differences  that  keep  men 
apart,  God  does  not  change,  and  those  who  are 


268  PROPHECY  AND  POETRY 

concerned  with  Him  possess  a  common  meeting- 
ground  which  distance  of  place  and  time,  or  pecu- 
liarities of  race  and  environment,  or  the  multitu- 
dinous conditions  which  come  and  go  as  the  world 
goes  on  its  way,  are  powerless  to  destroy.  But  more 
than  all  we  may  account  for  the  closeness  of  their 
thought  from  the  fact  that  each,  from  his  own  high 
place,  looks  over  towards  the  other's  station.  Proph- 
ecy has  a  sanction  to  which  the  very  highest  poetry 
makes  no  claim.  But  when  John  Keble  spoke  of 
the  poets  as  "heirs  of  more  than  royal  race,"  he 
spoke  well.  They  show  us  the  power  of  the  mind, 
the  reach  of  the  loving  heart,  the  depths  of  the 
awakened  soul.  They  point  out  an  avenue  of  es- 
cape from  those  sordid  cares,  those  petty  half- 
interests,  those  besetting  trifles,  of  which  none  of 
us  are  without  experience.  There  is  nothing  more 
real  than  those  things  with  which  the  noblest  poetry 
deals.  It  shows  us,  not  from  without  but  from 
within,  not  as  a  monitor  but  as  a  loving  counsellor, 
what  we  might  be,  what  we  ought  to  be.  It  does 
its  work  of  renewal  and  refreshing  in  the  soul  when 
the  fire  and  the  earthquake  and  the  whirlwind 
might  come  and  go  in  vain.  It  tinges  the  clouds 


THE  BESETTING  GOD  269 

that  gather  about  life  with  an  unearthly  glory.  It 
makes  humanity  nobler,  our  friends  dearer,  our 
joys  keener,  our  griefs  more  sacred.  It  even  seems 
as  if  it  made  God  nearer  than  He  was  before. 
Prophecy  speaks  often  with  a  sterner  and  more  in- 
sistent voice.  It  has  the  right,  not  only  to  speak  to 
men  of  God,  but  to  speak  for  God.  It  stirs  the  con- 
science, as  poetry  moves  the  heart.  While  Isaiah 
was  the  greatest  of  the  prophets,  more  than  any  of 
his  fellow-prophets  he  was  a  poet ;  and  while  Brown- 
ing was  a  poet  of  the  first  order,  the  prophetic  spirit 
is  constantly  present  in  his  work. 


A     000118267     . 


